Tools of the Trade: How We Optimize & Grow at Bala

Consider this a cheat sheet for all of the helpful platforms / tools we use across the Bala biz...

Starting a business now would feel so much easier after everything I’ve learned over the past six years and finally knowing how to put it all to use. I thought it might be helpful to share some of the tools and platforms we use—hopefully, they can help you out too.

Social + Marketing

• Dash Hudson - our planning and scheduling platform for IG & TikTok. You can visualize the feed & schedule posts. You can tag your team members for approvals etc. There is a cheaper base package I think about $250/month or so.

Influencer

• Home From College - I LOVE this platform. You can do a lot on it because it’s a huge database of college students and you post a “gig” and they apply to your gig. You can name your price and your project so the possibilities are endless. For us, we use it to farm out creative content on TikTok. Works like this:

  • Post a gig that says we need TikTok posts created

  • Name the price

  • College students apply to the gig

  • We pick our favorite options

  • We send them Bala products with a brief

  • They create and post the content

• From the Lobby - A cool way to farm out gifting to influencers. So you connect it to your Shopify platform and post a product or launch and from there, influencers apply to be gifted. You can also pay them to create content. Overall, a cool platform for PR/gifting.

• Grin - Influencer marketing platform to communicate with your affiliates and build a robust affiliate program. We have about 1K affiliates on this platform.

• Impact - The way we pay the influencers (links up with Grin).

People

• Gusto - Easiest payroll platform. It’s basically payroll at the click of a button.

• Slack - Chat tool for our team communications. Again, best out there IMO.

Finance

• QuickBooks Online - Easiest and most intuitive accounting software that integrates all sales channels.

• Parker Credit Card – The absolute best ecom credit card out there. The best terms and helps fuel growth. More on this to come. Use my link here.

• I have a lot more finance tools but I think I’ll share this on a separate post.

Brand + Creative

• Breef - At this point we usually choose agencies based on recommendations from other brands BUT this is a great resource we have used in the past where you can find any agency you need. Example: you need a PR agency you can post your job and agencies apply or you can sift through their database to pick an agency.

• UpWork - We used this early days at Bala to find talent (developers, graphic designers, etc) and we actually use this still to find creative talent from time to time. Photoshopping etc.

Ops

• ShipHero - The software we use for our 3PL.

• Inventory - We have used various inventory planning tools and TBH I have not found one that I can recommend. If you have one please lmk! It’s been an ongoing search for us.

B2B

• GMASS - Allows us to send mass sales emails to our database.

• Shopify B2B - This has changed our business. It’s a way for our B2B customers to shop without a sales person. Basically like any other consumer shops and it auto ships from the warehouse. This is probably the single most game changer thing we did for our business in 2024. I will do a separate post about this. Here’s a pic of our B2B storefront. Looks similar to our DTC:

  

• Faire - Marketplace for smaller independent stores to find Bala. They also just check out as they would any site and it auto ships from the warehouse.

• Bazaarvoice - Syncs our reviews on larger retailer platforms like Target and Walmart. A lot of large retailers require that you use Bazaarvoice.

DTC

• Shopify Plus - The best Ecommerce platform (I’ll write a post soon about the apps we use). Depending on the brand size it might make sense for you to start on Shopify and move to Shopify Plus once you hit a certain amount in sales as it’s more expensive.

• Klaviyo - Our email and SMS platform. Most intuitive and best out there IMO.

• Gorgias - The best platform out there to communicate with your customers and have your CX team respond to inquiries.

• Okendo - Our DTC reviews where customers can review their purchases. Cheaper alternative to Yotpo and does the trick.

Agencies

• We use partner agencies for CX, Meta & Google Advertising, TikTokShop, Amazon Seller Central, Website Dev. HMU if you want an intro to any of our agencies!

Reading / Doing

• Still reading The Ride of a Lifetime by CEO of Disney, Robert Iger. Taking me forever because having two toddlers at home makes me get a few pages in at a time right now.

• Creating vision boards all day for what I want 2025 to bring. Been doing this for years and highly recommend. Check out my post on vision boards & New Years goals.

• Reflecting over 2024 and inspired by all of our amazing Bala girlies. Thinking about what we can bring to them in 2025. <3

Happy new years eve & thanks for reading! x