Shawn Singh was managing 40–50 people at a fintech by day and building a copper drinkware brand between 5pm and 7pm every night. Then Valentine's Day 2025 hit,

250 orders landed over a single weekend, and he and his wife packed every one of them on the living room floor, with 10 pallets of stock stacked in the garage

behind them.

In this episode, Shawn joins Ryan Martin (Host and Founder of Remarkable Digital) to unpack how Copper Culture went from

an off-the-shelf Shopify theme to a multi-market brand selling into Australia,

the US and 17 duty-free markets, and why he'd rather be the best copper drinkware brand outside India than the biggest.

It's an honest one: the money lost learning Meta, the 51% jump in the copper price over 12 months, and a live teardown of a supplier sample that scored "7.5 out of 10" and still got rejected.

WHAT WE COVER

• Why a lunch-and-learn from the Arms of Eve founders was the final push to quit

the day job

• Building to a few million in lifetime sales on a default Shopify theme

• Google first, Meta second: why it took 18–24 months to tame the beast, and

what it cost along the way

• The Valentine's gift set that changed everything, no discount, just better

packaging and a message flip from "you need a copper bottle" to "give your

loved ones a copper bottle"

• The UGC engine: triggering review requests 48 hours after delivery (not 14 or

21 days) and offering a coupon to upgrade a text review to video

• The real science of copper: antimicrobial to 99%+ within three hours, plus the copper toxicity warning Shawn puts on every box

• Copper up 51% in 12 months, 300g in a bottle and up to a kilo in a dispenser, how Copper Culture protected margin without passing on the full increase

• Manufacturing in India's copper cottage industry: why a supplier that tripled

output still can't keep up with a business that grew 6x

• Testing new markets and SKUs: 200-300 unit runs, six-week sell-through rules,

and why Moscow mule mugs fly in Australia but not the US

• Why a real-time profit dashboard is the first thing Shawn checks every morning

(and the mate who did $25k in revenue for $800 profit)

CHAPTERS

00:00 – Cold open

01:27 – Welcome: Shawn Singh, Copper Culture

01:57 – Rebuilding the site with Clever Conversions

02:11 – The first website his wife designed, and the millions it carried

04:42 – Fintech by day, ecommerce by night

05:36 – The Arms of Eve lunch-and-learn that changed everything

06:00 – Google traction first, then 18–24 months learning Meta

07:20 – Valentine's Day 2025: 250 orders packed in the living room

10:22 – The copper pitch — and the toxicity warning

11:47 – How to actually use a copper bottle day to day

12:50 – Hammered vs polished, and why hammering matters

13:37 – Indian grandparents, an Ayurvedic practitioner, and terrible Amazon bottles

15:32 – The Valentine's gift set and the AOV unlock

16:49 – Demand capture on Google vs demand generation on Meta

18:01 – In-house, offshore, then Swann Studio

19:46 – The UGC machine: the 48-hour post-delivery review trigger

23:19 – Copper up 51%: margins, pricing and a lower CAC

26:11 – Live sample teardown: what a 7.5/10 looks like

30:28 – How a copper jug is actually made, from Chilean copper up

31:46 – Supplier at 3x, business at 6x: pre-orders and air freight

33:46 – Australia, the US, and 17 duty-free markets (Dubai and Saudi next)

34:56 – Expanding the range: 200–300 unit tests and fast-moving SKUs

36:13 – Real-time profit, channel decisions and a creative backlog

LINKS

Copper Culture: https://copperculture.com.au

Clever Conversions (Ilan Hurwitz): [https://cleverconversions.com.au/]

Swann Studio: https://swan.studio/

BeProfit: https://beprofit.co

Enjoyed this one? Follow the eCommerce Aus Podcast and leave a review it helps more Aussie founders find the show.

A text message at an airport turned into Australia's biggest retail and eCommerce community in about twelve months:

4,000 members, up to 90 chat groups, and meetups from Ballarat to Dubai.

Dean Salakas (The Party People) and Jethro Marks (The Nile) join Ryan Martin (Remarkable Digital) to explain how Retail Community Group actually works, what it deliberately isn't, and how its members had workarounds in place days before Australia Post announced it was suspending shipping to the US.

Dean built a two-person family business into Australia's largest party supplies retailer, offering click-and-collect in 1999 and becoming Google's first advertiser in Australia in 2003 at one cent a click, before exiting eighteen months ago.

Jethro co-founded The Nile in 2003 and is now building the world's most trusted bookstore, with US and UK launches on the way. Neither of them set out to build a community.

They started a WhatsApp group so they could find each other for a drink at Retail Fest, and it had fifty people in it before Dean's plane landed.

Join the Whatsapp here

In this episode they unpack the mechanics behind the growth: why the group split into interest-based channels for AI, cross-border trade, HR and open-to-work; how the "pitch slap" keeps unsolicited selling out; and why a moderated, free, no-pay-to-play space has become the place Australian retailers go first when something breaks.

They also share what's coming next, including a public events directory, a vendor portal and peer advisory groups for retailers, plus their honest take on the hardest problem ahead: keeping the magic while scaling to a market Jethro estimates at 100,000 people.

If you run an online store, work in retail tech, or you're new to eCommerce and feel like you're doing it alone, this one is a practical guide to plugging into the most collaborative industry in the country.

Join The Retail Community Here

Topics covered: retail community building, Australian eCommerce, cross-border trade and tariffs, Australia Post US shipping suspension, 3PL and fulfilment, retail conferences and events, AI tools for retail, B2B community moderation, thought leadership for service providers.

Running an Australian eCommerce or Shopify store? Your customers have started shopping inside ChatGPT, and shoppers arriving from AI answer engines convert around 1.5x better than any other source.

Melbourne eCommerce Aus Event - Tickets Here.

Online shopping has become… boring? A recent Criteo study found 77% of Australians describe online shopping as unexciting, and that's just the starting point for one of our most forward-looking conversations yet.

Ryan sits down with Matt Hurle from Criteo to unpack the findings of their latest report and what they mean for anyone running an eCommerce business in Australia. Matt brings 20 years in advertising, 15 in digital and 10 in martech, from cold-calling rural businesses out of the Yellow Pages to sitting at the front edge of AI-powered retail media.

The big theme: the path to purchase is no longer linear. Consumers are bouncing between publishers, retailer sites, social platforms and AI answer engines like ChatGPT, and increasingly starting their entire shopping journey inside those answer engines, at the very first spark of an idea. Criteo was the first technology company integrated with OpenAI via API and has already run 2,000+ campaigns in that environment. Early signal? Shoppers arriving from ChatGPT convert about 1.5x more efficiently than any other source.

We also get into the eternal marketer's tension Ryan sums up perfectly: "The thing I love about digital marketing is you can track every dollar. The thing I hate about digital marketing is you can track every dollar." Attribution, brand vs. performance, the resurgence of SEO (or GEO/AIO, whatever we're calling it this week), influencer strategy, and why customer support and honest reviews now beat polished influencer content for building real trust.

Key Takeaways

• The funnel is dead — long live discovery. Consumers now begin shopping journeys inside AI answer engines, far earlier than the traditional mid-to-lower funnel signals marketers relied on. Brands need to show up higher up the discovery journey.
• Commerce data is the new gold standard. Moving away from demographics and guesswork toward real commerce signals — what people add to cart, actually buy, and browse before and after. Criteo observes 1T+ in annual eCommerce transactions across 730M+ daily active shoppers.
• Show up across surfaces, not just your own. Criteo's independence means it serves ads on whichever "surface" (open web, ChatGPT, Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, X) is most likely to convert — not a walled-garden's owned inventory.
• ChatGPT shoppers convert ~1.5x better. They've researched and validated inside the answer engine, so trust is high by the time they land.
• SEO/GEO/AIO matters more than ever. As search shifts from keywords to full-sentence, conversational queries, rich product data and verifiable messaging determine whether you appear in AI answers — or get left out of the consideration set entirely.
• Trust beats polish. Verified reviews and genuine customer support now outweigh paid influencer content. 200 five-star reviews can be less trusted than a 4.7 average. Reply to bad reviews honestly. (Ryan's Nero merino example and Matt's Artisan chopping-board recall story both make the point.)
• Match the influencer to the job to be done. Celebrities drive reach and exposure; micro-influencers drive engaged, community-level trust and conversion. Different jobs, different tiers.
• AI answer engines stay out of sensitive categories. OpenAI keeps advertising away from health-related matters, directing people back to their GPs.