Jeremy Cai founded Italic an e-commerce selling unbranded luxury-grade essentials from the same manufacturers as your favorite brands. No logos, no markups.
We spoke with Jeremy about how he finally found a shared inbox his team was willing to adopt!
So Jeremy, what challenges led you to look for a solution like Missive?
What pushed us to embrace a shared inbox solution is that we were emailing every single customer who signed up at Italic.com, which was about a hundred thousand leads.
We were sending a simple message like, "Hey, why did you sign up?" We wanted to learn, but very quickly, after sending a hundred thousand of those, that becomes untenable as an individual.
We first tried a Missive competitor and had a tough time with the product; my team didn't embrace it. Then, luckily, I found your page comparing Missive to the product we were using. I was like, wow, this is pretty compelling; that's what we need!
First, it's a lot more affordable. But when I installed it, it felt much more native and usable as an inbox.
First, it's a lot more affordable. But when I installed it, it felt much more native and usable as an inbox. Missive prioritizes being an inbox first and foremost, whereas other tools try to be a collaboration tool. So we started using Missive to get through that backlog of messages, and something magical happened; our team that rejected many other solutions began embracing it. They loved it.
We soon started using the Twilio integration for SMS; it allowed us to text those people and offer VIP concierge service. We slowly were using Missive for everything! We've now been on Missive for more than four years.
How vital does Missive compare to all the tools you use to run Italic?
It's more important to me than Slack. It's a powerful solution to a deep-rooted challenge; no matter what you do internally, you will still have external communications. And if you can collaborate around those external communications, I think a lot of magic happens. That's so cool.
Do you have an example?
With thousands of emails with hundreds of Excel files shared back and forth, oftentimes, you want to pull in your ops or finance person and quickly ask, "Can we ship this thing?", "Can we meet this timeline from finance" or whatever it is. It's magic.
How would you describe Missive in one sentence?
Missive is the best inbox, it's very thoughtfully built out. Huge kudos to you and the small team.
