Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / How to launch exclusively into Sephora with Bread Beauty Supply Founder, Maeva Heim

Transcript

How to launch exclusively into Sephora with Bread Beauty Supply Founder, Maeva Heim · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Maeva Haim for Female Startup Club.
• 0:12
  Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Female Startup Club Podcast. I'm your host, Doon Roisin, and joining me on the show today is Maeva Haim, founder of Bread Beauty Supply, or Bread for short. Now, I actually met Maeva by chance last year when I was in Melbourne visiting a girlfriend, and I randomly recognized her voice from a podcast that I'd listened to her speak on before, and the rest is history. Okay.
• 0:38
  Now she's here sharing her incredible story and I'm just so pumped about it. But back to the episode. Bread is the best shampoo alternative and co-wash for kinky, curly, coily hair. We're talking about how she took a third-door approach to launch exclusively with Sephora, what she's learned so far, and a few giggles along the way. This is Maeva for Female Startup Club.
• 1:04
  Hi, Maver. Thank you so much for joining me on Female Startup Club podcast today. Hello. Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here. Me too. So happy to be here with my morning brain. Before we jump in, do you remember when we actually met, the day we met at Greta's office briefly? Yeah.
• 1:26
  I think I do. Yes. I can't tell you what the day was or the date was, but I recall that that is where we initially met.
• 1:35
  I think it's so funny. I actually recognized your voice. I didn't hear your name when you came in and were chatting and things like that. I was just like, excuse me, miss, but I know your voice. And then we figured out it was from Alison's podcast episode. And now we're here. Love that for us. Oh my gosh. And it's probably less than a year later, or maybe it's like a full year and a lot has happened since then for both of us.
• 2:03
  Yes, a lot has happened. I'm so excited to get into your part of this. Do you want to start by introducing yourself and what your company actually is? Yeah, so my name is Niva.
• 2:16
  I am the founder of Bread Beauty Supply, Bread for short. And Bread is essentially a hair care brand, but we focus on textured hair. So hair that's curly, coily, wavy, or even hair that is just generally dry and needs a lot of moisture. And we launched to the world in July of this year. We launched with Sephora.
• 2:37
  And I'm really kind of proud that we're one of very few black owned brands to launch in Sephora. We're definitely building that out. And all of our formulas are clean. And it's all about basically making textured hair care and hair care in general, simple and easy.
• 2:55
  Amazing. And I've obviously been following along your journey ever since we met. So for the last year, and I'm just so pumped for you. I see all of your updates and I've read about you, like, you know, just scrolling somewhere else and seeing your brand. Or like I was telling you on Instagram yesterday, someone I was asking the woman I was interviewing if she had any recommendations for new guests on the show.
• 3:17
  And she was like, oh, you need to speak to Maeva from Bread. And I was like, that's so funny that you say that because I'm interviewing her tomorrow morning. And she was like, no way. That is so bizarre. Serendipity. Love it. Serendipity indeed. Let's rewind back to your life a few years ago when the light bulb moment happened. What was going on in your world? What made you decide to start a brand? What was that time like? So many things.
• 3:47
  My journey was a really long one, I think, to get to the point of launch and where we are now. Growing up, I don't think I ever kind of had an aspiration to launch my own brand or be a business owner. But it was kind of drilled into me from a very young age, regardless, because my mom owned a hair salon. So she was also a hair care entrepreneur.
• 4:10
  here in Perth. She had a salon that was this tiny little garage connected to the back of an Italian restaurant. And I was there all the time, like on weekends and after school and around all of these hair care products that were for textured hair because it was a braiding salon. But I
• 4:28
  I guess the moment for me happened later on and I ended up, you know, in a corporate career and that was kind of my thing. I was like, yes, I'm climbing the corporate ladder. That was always kind of the path that I wanted to go down. I was very much one of those, you know, dedicated, I guess, quote, high achievers in school. And so it was like, cool, this is the path that is laid out for you and this is what you're going to do.
• 4:53
  And so that was kind of what I was doing. I ended up working in marketing and beauty in the corporate space at L'Oreal. And I came...
• 5:01
  kind of just got to a point where I was really just fed up with the beauty industry. I was, you know, behind the scenes of this ginormous corporation working on some of, you know, the biggest beauty brands in the world. And I didn't feel like those brands were talking to me. And I was also privy to a lot of the behind the curtain things that went on that gave me that insight to be like, okay, I can see why there's a disconnect.
• 5:26
  I can see why these brands aren't catering to me. I can see why there aren't more foundation shades in the market for women who look like me and women who have darker skin tones. And I really saw that as one, a huge problem and two, an opportunity to potentially start my own brand because I was just becoming fed up. I was like, these companies have all of this money and we're all working so hard for this end that I just wasn't aligned to anymore. And I wanted to do something about it.
• 5:55
  And I wanted to know, you know, where that money was going. I was working with this ginormous company and I didn't know where the benefit of that was going, the economic benefit. And I figured there weren't really a lot of beauty brands, like really large beauty brands that were owned by women or women of color. And that to me was amazing.
• 6:17
  where this massive problem was stemming from, because I felt like you had to be in that position of power in order to really have the effects trickle down into the market. And I remember complaining about this to my partner one day and saying, you know, there aren't enough female founders in beauty that have massive companies. There aren't enough black women that are CEOs of these beauty companies that can make these decisions so that we see it impacted in the market. And he was like, well, what are you going to do about it?
• 6:45
  And it was kind of that moment that I was like, oh, well, I guess I could do something about it. You know, I've got this industry know-how. I've got this, you know, really this background in beauty. It's kind of been in my family and in my blood for so long. And I figured, you know, why not do something about it and start a brand that would have that goal of making the industry more diverse, providing more products and services that were better for women of color.
• 7:13
  And so I left my marketing role and it took about, I mean, I think it was overall like at least three years from that moment that I left to now actually launching the brand, three or four years. And when I first left, I actually was considering launching a makeup brand. This was pre-Fenty.
• 7:33
  And I often kind of make that distinction when I think of the beauty industry as like this pre-Fenty phase and post-Fenty phase. Because pre-Fenty, you could not find foundation for darker shades unless you were shopping at MAC. And so there was this massive gap in makeup. I knew that the entire industry had a problem, but that seemed like the most immediate need. And so I was exploring, you know, launching this makeup brand. I wanted to launch a brand that had 100 foundation shades and I was like, oh, yeah, I'm going to go.
• 8:03
  And it was actually while I was, you know, exploring that concept and working in another role that was actually in the startup space so that I could kind of absorb a lot of startup wisdom that I went on a trip to the United States. And I was in New York and we got on a flight to go from New York to Colorado. And I had a chemical hair relaxer in my suitcase, which is basically a very toxic, caustic,
• 8:30
  product that you can buy over the counter and you use it to straighten your hair. And I arrived in Colorado, opened up my suitcase and this chemical relaxer had exploded over all of my stuff. Oh, yeah. And it was a great time. We were in the middle of nowhere in the mountains somewhere and I didn't have access to get another one. And I'd been chemically relaxing my hair since I was six or seven years old.
• 8:58
  So my entire life, and it's kind of like bleach. So you have to top up, you know, for relaxer, it's like every three to six months. Imagine that over the course of a lifetime of 20 plus years and, you know, back in the day and still now, there are some really, really harmful products in ingredients in these products. And so you can imagine that the effect on your health is not great, especially for products that you're putting on your scalp so often and so frequently. Yeah, right.
• 9:25
  And a lot of the time the experience is that you leave it on for a really long time and you get welts and scabs on your scalp. And so the issues that they cause are not only potentially internal, but external as well. And that is all just part of the experience. You don't really question it until, you know, you get to this point where you're like, okay, I think I should stop doing this.
• 9:46
  And so it was kind of just in that moment that I was like, you know what, I should stop using this product. I had been, you know, slowly transitioning a lot of my body care and skincare products to things that are more clean and realizing that I was still relaxing my hair and putting this really harmful product on my scalp. And so I decided to stop and go back to my natural texture, which is very curly.
• 10:10
  And I had no idea at that time that I had curly hair. And I know that sounds ridiculous. My hair, like when it's,
• 10:18
  you know, if it's not in like a curl pattern, it's just like an Afro. And so I didn't realize that I actually had curls, like spiral curls, because I'd never even seen my hair naturally, or I had to look after it because I was constantly either relaxing it. You're just in that routine. Yeah. It was always relaxed. It was always in braids or in a weave my entire life. And so I had no idea how to look after it, what it was, any of that.
• 10:47
  And I just made this snap decision in that moment, not realizing how difficult and cumbersome that transition process was going to be. And it wasn't until, you know, we got access to the shops again and I was able to get online that I was really shocked at.
• 11:06
  the state of the category and the products that were targeted towards this type of hair. And I remember getting to the multicultural hair care aisle, which is what they have in the US. And they make that distinction. And I was just so shocked. And I felt like I had gone back to the 90s. Nothing had really changed. There was a lot of innovation happening in other categories. And it just felt like this part of the beauty industry had been completely left behind. And so I went away and was like,
• 11:35
  These products just don't exist. There is nothing on the market that is simple. It was very confusing, very overwhelming. And I was like, I just want to know how to wash my hair. And no brands are telling me or giving me a simple solution to do that. There's a lot of different product types. Routines are really long. Even if you research online, like looking up natural hair care routine or curly hair care routine.
• 11:59
  it's like 20 products you have to have in a routine. I was like, I don't have time for that. And so that was kind of the moment that I went away and started building bread to be this brand and offer these products in a really simple way using a kind of kit philosophy and making routines really simple, starting with wash day and that first part of your routine, which is washing your hair.
• 12:25
  And, you know, it wasn't just me that was going through this experience. And so I knew that there would be a lot of other women who were going through these exact steps and then entering this market and being like, there's nothing here for me. Relax the sales at that time had declined almost 40 percent over a five year period.
• 12:41
  And I think just anecdotally, so many women were going back to their natural hair and this natural hair movement was really a thing and still is a thing. It's very much like a coming of age. You get to a certain age where you're like, I'm going to start relaxing and go back to your hair, your natural hair. And that was, you know, a good couple of years ago. And the brand had a completely different name at the time. What was it? Oh, I'm not going to say because it's so embarrassing.
• 13:13
  It's super embarrassing. It was a very kind of like trendy thing at the time. And for that reason, within three weeks of me thinking of that name, somebody trademarked it. And so I was like, oh, crap, I have to go back to the drawing board. But the concept remained the same. It was like we want to simplify textured hair care routines and we really want to provide the staples and the essentials of her hair care wardrobe.
• 13:36
  And so when I had to go back to the drawing board, I was like, cool, what is it that we're doing? That's what we want to be. We want to be the staples. And I was like, staples, what are staples in other categories? And landed on bread.
• 13:48
  Oh, I just love it. Love it. Love it. Love everything about it. The name, the look, the language. I really think it's such a special brand. Can we actually talk about the branding for a second before we get into, you know, how you actually built the company? How did you come up with the vibe? Like, obviously you've, you've probably worked with someone, all that kind of thing, but it's so distinct in, in its look and feel and, and language. How did you, how did you
• 14:20
  Yeah, I think that a lot of the brand and the vibe and the aesthetic of it has been driven by this girl and this woman that I was seeing online who wasn't being spoken to by other brands in this space. And so I was looking at these brands. A lot of them were heritage brands, you know, a lot of kind of conglomerates that have been around for a long time and have multiple brands in this space. And a lot of their look and feel was very polished and photoshopped and glossy.
• 14:50
  And then I would go on Instagram, for example, and see this woman who I felt like, you know, was a customer like me and that I could relate to as well. And her aesthetic and the way that she presented herself was completely in opposition to what you would see in the market. And I thought there's there has to be room for a brand like Bread.
• 15:10
  to be a product and something that you'd be really proud to have on your bathroom shelf and that aligns with her identity. And so, yeah, the vibe has been completely inspired by her. And, you know, I worked with multiple different people and kind of bringing it all together.
• 15:27
  But I think in the end, like I kind of just went with a lot of it was my gut and what I was seeing and just trying to translate that into a brand. And so it's still super fluid and ever evolving, just like she is. And that has probably been one of the most difficult pieces of building this brand, because I think that.
• 15:51
  Yeah, for sure. There is when you have an idea in your head and you know what you want something to look like, it can be very difficult for somebody else to translate something that doesn't exist and is like intangible in your mind. And of course, when you're working with designers, you know, designers want to design. But if you already have a very kind of strict idea of what you want, it can be really difficult to kind of rein people back and be like, no, we don't need new concepts. We want this, but make it look professional.
• 16:21
  Um, and that's really tricky. And, and, you know, we're still on that path of, you know, really finding that person or that, that team that can translate that vision into tangible things, whether it's digitally or, or through print. Um, because a lot of that work I still do myself. Wow. Incredible. I want to go back to, you know, when you've had that light bulb moment where you make the decision, you're like, this is it. It's going to be bread. Um, we're going to build this brand. What are the next steps? How do you actually build the brand? Um, yeah.
• 16:51
  It's so funny because I was in this phase for so long of,
• 16:57
  listening to all the podcasts, going to all the conferences, reading all the founder stories. And that was always my one question is like, what is the first thing that you did? Because I felt so stuck even when I landed on this concept. And even though I knew that this was what I wanted to build, there was still like so much, I guess, like push and pull between like, what do I do first? Am I doing the right thing? Like, what if I do that? What if I waste money on this and all of those things? And so I wanted to know from everybody, I'm like, what's the first thing you did? And
• 17:24
  And I honestly can't remember any of the answers that I found from that. And I actually can't remember for myself either. I don't actually know what the first thing was. What I will say is that once I landed on the concept and was like, cool, I would buy this brand. I guess the first thing that I did was figure out if other people would too.
• 17:44
  And I think there's different ways to do that. For me, I was, you know, scraping the internet for any kind of market research that I could find for free that would validate that there were other people that would need this. And so I was looking at Mintel reports, other consumer reports that were showing that,
• 17:59
  people buying relaxers less and spending more on care products like conditioners or shampoo and how much and what the trend looks like and what the overall kind of cosmetics trends are, which if you look at anything, it's like fashion cosmetics, it's cyclical. And so I could see that, you know, hair care was going to be or become huge. There was going to be a real renaissance to the hair
• 18:24
  it was all about color cosmetics. It's like makeup, makeup, makeup is a big thing. And I'm like, cool. In a couple of years, haircare is going to come around and then we're going to swing back. But
• 18:33
  just getting that data and getting those insights really made me feel confident about the direction and really made me feel good about how we would position this story as well to investors or to retailers or whoever it might be. So that was one of the first things that I did. But, you know, again, insights and knowledge, one thing, action is another thing. So I guess after that, I spent a lot of time kind of crafting that visual language of the brand and
• 19:00
  figuring out what the products should be. And so that took a lot of time in terms of being able to test products because I actually don't like to wash my hair very often, which is the whole point of the brand. And so it's difficult to be able to test a lot of products in a timely way because it just takes a little bit longer.
• 19:17
  And then I went about finding manufacturers. Everything, nothing happened in a linear way. It wasn't like do this and then do that. I was like, I'm just going to try, you know, all of these different things. And eventually I think they'll come together in a straightforward path. And so I spoke to a lot of different manufacturers, tested out a lot of different manufacturers, independent cosmetic formulators, all of those things.
• 19:42
  until, you know, we landed on who we would work with, exactly what that launch product assortment would look like. But then also, you know, figuring out where do I want this brand to go? Like, what are we trying to achieve here? And I knew that one...
• 19:57
  I wanted to create a brand that is going to scale quickly and be really big because the whole point is that we want to change the cosmetics industry. And in order to do that, we need a big brand where, you know, a woman of color has decision making power so that we can impact the industry. So I knew I wanted it to be big, which meant that we would need investment. And then I knew that I wanted to launch with Sephora. And the reason for that was because, you know, I didn't feel like this shopper necessarily had anything in here at Sephora.
• 20:26
  Um, and I wanted the girl who was going in there and buying Fenty to have an option in here as well. And so at the same time I was figuring out, okay, cool. If we're going to launch with Sephora, how can I get into Sephora? How do I get a launch contract with Sephora before we've produced a single product? That was my goal. I was like, how do we get that purchase order before anything hits the line? Um, so that we had that kind of, you know, backing and, um, didn't have to outlay so much without any guarantees.
• 20:54
  Um, and so all of those things were happening simultaneously. Um, and I don't know, no one thing really happened first. It was just everything at the same time. Everything and anything all at the same time. Yeah.
• 21:09
  I'm so interested to know about the Sephora piece of the puzzle, because like you said, how do you get a launch contract with a brand like Sephora, which is obviously like huge and, you know, the goal for any beauty brand, I imagine. What were the kind of steps that you did to get on their radar? How did you make that happen? Yeah, I think it's interesting because I definitely know of brands that have been offered to launch in Sephora and have declined and
• 21:35
  I think, you know, certain styles of brands work really well there and others maybe not so much. But for us, I knew that I wanted us to be omni-channel. I was like, we need a retail partner and Sephora is like our big bet. And then, of course, we want to sell through our own e-com so we can have that close relationship with our consumer. But for me, it was kind of, and I have talked about this in the past, but this idea of like taking a side door, because to your point, everyone wants to launch in Sephora almost every month.
• 22:02
  Right. And so going a traditional route of, you know, finding someone's email and sending an email to a buyer is probably not going to get you cut through. And so what I did was one, I knew that there was an opportunity to potentially speak to like a Sephora executive at events. That's one way that I've been able to kind of meet different people and get people's contact and build relationships.
• 22:28
  And so I ended up going to this conference in LA and I knew that there was going to be a Sephora VP speaking there. I think it was actually their head merchant, but last minute she pulled out and somebody else ended up coming. And I just basically like semi-stalked her at this event. I was like, I'm just going to wait for the right opportunity to approach her. Yeah.
• 22:54
  Um, and there was that window of opportunity. She kind of went off to get some lunch and then come back and she was just wandering around and yeah, I approached her and I just said, introduced myself, said I'm working on this hair care brand. Um,
• 23:08
  you know, what is your advice for being able to get a meeting with a buyer? And at the time, you know, I knew that this wasn't very common. Like it's not very common that you can kind of approach the floor and go, hey, I've got this brilliant idea. Give me a purchaser and then I'll go and do it. Unless you're a celebrity or you're an influencer because you've got that built in audience. But I knew that, you know, Jen Atkin had done it. I read this article where she was like, yeah, I pitched the brand. And so I was like, yes, let's launch it. And I was like, cool, maybe Jen can do it.
• 23:37
  I'll give it a hot crack. And so, yeah, I told this VP from Sephora what I was doing and she was like, great, do you have product samples? And I had some really early product samples at the time. And I said, yeah, I've got some samples and I've got a brand deck. And she was like, great, well, here's my card.
• 23:58
  email me the deck and I'll get it to the right person. And I was like, oh, okay, great. She was like, how easy was that? And I thought, was that too easy? I don't know. I just asked for advice and now you're going to connect me with the buyer. Okay, fine. Let's do this.
• 24:16
  And so I booked a flight to San Francisco because I thought if there's a chance that, you know, this deck gets to the right person and they want to do a meeting, like I want to be there for it. Like, let's do it. And so I booked this trip to San Francisco and refined this deck while I was there, sent it off at midnight on a Sunday, got an email back, I think Monday, from the haircare buyer. And she said, I can meet you for 15 minutes tomorrow.
• 24:42
  You were like, thank goodness I came to San Fran. And I thought, wow, okay, yes. But I think my flight or bus was going back that night. And so I had to change like my tickets and everything. And I was like, worth it. And then the other way that I kind of went about it to, you know, kind of take that side door approach was I knew that Sephora had this Accelerate program.
• 25:04
  and felt like Bread could potentially be a good brand for that. And I reached out to all of the contacts that I knew in San Francisco and LA, told them about what I was doing. And one of them from San Francisco said, oh, this is cool. You should actually meet with the woman who runs Sephora Accelerate.
• 25:21
  And I said, great, well, I'm in San Francisco. Please introduce me. And she did. And it just so happened that she was also available the following day at 10 a.m. And then the meeting with the buyer was at 11 a.m. They both picked the same spot, which was Joe and the Juice downstairs from the Sephora office. And so I set myself up in the corner of Joe and the Juice at, I think it's 525 Market Street.
• 25:46
  and prepared for my meetings, which honestly were like life-changing in the end. Because one, I met with this Sephora buyer. We ended up chatting for like an hour, an hour and a half. And she loved the concept, was really bullish on hair. She's the hair care buyer, but was really bullish on growing hair, which is the fastest growing category at Sephora. It's the smallest, but super fast growing. She was really bullish on textured hair and really felt like this was a brand that was missing in the space.
• 26:14
  And then I met with the manager of Sephora Accelerate, who is amazing and is still the manager there today. And, you know, she was very supportive, but it wasn't open to Australia based founders at the time. So she was like, you know, it might open next year. And if it does, like reach out and you should apply.
• 26:31
  And so I kept in touch with that buyer and actually ended up, you know, meeting with her a couple of times over the years as I went back and forth from Melbourne to LA. And when that Sephora Accelerate opened up for the first time to Australia-based founders, she ended up putting me forward as a recommendation, which was amazing and a huge bonus for me to be able to, I think there were some parts at the start of the application that I could skip over. So like the application video and stuff, I was like, no, I'm still doing that.
• 27:01
  I still did an application and the video. And I think Lily, who's the manager of Accelerate, said that the application that I did was the longest they've ever had in history.
• 27:13
  You were like, I'm getting in. I'm just going like throwing everything at it so that you cannot say no. And so that's kind of how it all came about and then got to be part of Accelerate, which was just the most incredible experience I've probably ever had for the business. And we got to the end of that, did demo day, presented the brand to a bunch of investors who were, you know, already, you know, interested in the beauty space specifically.
• 27:42
  And then following that,
• 27:44
  Got the contract to launch with Sephora, which was amazing. Long time coming, but we got there. Oh, my gosh. Isn't it crazy, that feeling of like a really serious goal that you have coming into fruition and actually like being realized and you just being like, oh, hang on a second. I had an idea and then I had a goal and now I'm actually here. Yeah. It's the best feeling. It's crazy, especially when you have a goal where you're like, this is very unlikely.
• 28:14
  you know, spoken to myself internally and thought this, this is probably not going to happen. And just like prepared myself for that outcome. And so regardless of whether it happened or not, I was still fine. But then when it does happen, you're like, Oh, okay, let's go.
• 28:30
  Oh, my gosh. Totally. Absolutely. When you were going to the US, like to LA and San Fran and this kind of thing, was that because you were already positioning yourself to get American funding? Or was it specifically for just Sephora side of things? Yeah, I don't know that I was...
• 28:49
  specifically positioning myself to get American funding because I did pitch to investors in Australia as well. But it was more so that I knew if we wanted to get funding at all, the US would have to be our first target market because of the scale.
• 29:02
  And so those trips back and forth were one about building relationships with Sephora, building, you know, seeing what was happening in the market and then also making connections with investors. But it was more so about the audience. It was like, okay, where is the place where we need to be first in order to capture this audience and figure out how this brand is going to grow and put us in a good position to have scale to begin with. And that was the US.
• 29:26
  Got it. Totally. And what was your experience like when you were going through the process of fundraising and pitching to investors in Australia? What's the Australian landscape like there? It's a very interesting landscape, I think, for startups in general, but especially beauty startups, because the market here is so, so young. And it's very uncommon to have a pre-launch, pre-product
• 29:52
  beauty startup, female founder, all of those things get funded in Australia. And I think I honestly only know of maybe one or two people. There's probably more, but there's probably not more than, I think it would be single digits to get institutional funding.
• 30:09
  So there wasn't, you know, a huge appetite. I think for angel investors, there was a bit of an appetite, but I knew I needed like a really big lead. And I just wasn't going to get that in this market after having a few conversations, doing a few pitches. I was like, I think I need to focus my attention in the U.S. where things are kind of heating up a little.
• 30:28
  And it just so happened that everything kind of came together at the same time because one, we had demo day with Sephora. Two, we got the contract from Sephora. And three, you know, beauty in general, everyone was looking at and hair care specifically. There were so many funds and so many investors that were specifically on the hunt for a hair care investment and a lot who were on the hunt for a textured hair care investment. So everything ended up aligning really perfectly. Yeah.
• 30:56
  Yeah, it sounds like the stars really aligned on that one. It's so interesting. How had you been funding the business until that point? Because I imagine, you know, two years or three years, even when you were back doing the makeup side of things, you know, that's a lot of development costs. Yeah, absolutely.
• 31:13
  So I was still working full time for most of that period. I did some work with the League of Extraordinary Women, which was an amazing way to kind of see how one startup business runs, but then also to be able to network with and meet so many other female founders who were part of that community. And then I ended up working with Greta, who is an amazing entrepreneur who I think you've interviewed.
• 31:38
  Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I was in her office that day was for, um, we interviewed it in that like boardroom there, which was really echoey. It was really funny. It was. Yeah. Um, so Greta, I had met, I think when I was working at L'Oreal actually, and I have no idea how I ended up coming across her, but we met while I was working at L'Oreal and kind of stayed in touch. Um, and then at one point I caught up with her and was like, Hey, I'm building this like hair care thing.
• 32:08
  And really with just kind of showing it to her as a, as a way to kind of get some advice. And she was like, well, I'm building this new startup called Hey Influencers, which is basically I can influence a marketing place. Why don't you come and work with me?
• 32:23
  learn everything that I know. And when you're ready to leave to do bread full time, you know, you can do that and we can have that conversation, which was just an incredible opportunity and experience to have and to really have that understanding from the get-go that it was like, this is temporary, but an awesome experience. And I was doing that full time and doing bread on the side for a really long time. And that funded everything.
• 32:50
  I think in manufacturing, the benefit is that a lot of manufacturers work on a, you can get free samples. They'll do the sampling process for free. And then once you kind of get to that order phase, that's when you have to invest a lot. But I also took out a loan. I had to take out a personal loan to fund a lot of things.
• 33:12
  And so I think I really paid that off now, now that I think about it. Ooh, nice. But that was really scary because I have almost never taken out a loan in my life. The only debt that I have is for my degree. Um,
• 33:27
  And I have one credit card, which I pay off in full every month. And so getting into debt was really, really scary for me. But in the end, I just knew that I had to do it. I was like, I'm not going to survive. It's going to be too stressful. I just have to do this. And just really, like I had so much faith that this would come to fruition eventually. But in, you know, five years time, it won't even matter. And just kind of had to suck up that, you know, that fear of the moment for what I knew would be
• 33:57
  fine in the future. Yeah. Calculated risk. Absolutely. You launched this year, I think it was July, right? Yes. Yeah. You launched in July and you had obviously the most incredible press here, there and everywhere. And since you've been on things like Vogue codes and all these really cool things, can you talk us through your go-to-market strategy and how you made all of those things kind of pop at the same time?
• 34:24
  Yeah, so we obviously launched at a very challenging time because we were in the middle of a pandemic. There were so many things going on socially. You know, the Black Lives Matter movement was really like at its height at that time as well. And so a lot of things were, you know, planned in advance, but we didn't have a lot of opportunity to get everything together in the time that we needed because we were so focused on operations. It was like we need to get this product done.
• 34:53
  from this country to this country into that warehouse and into the Sephora warehouse on time. That is our number one priority. And so, yeah, it honestly was not very smooth sailing. And I think we're just now like finding our feet. And we had all of this incredible launch press, which is amazing. And we had an amazing press launch partner to help us with that. And I think that for us, our go-to-market was very much about establishing ourselves in the press,
• 35:22
  so that we could kind of build out our brand equity and then focus on things that are further down the funnel later, which is what we're doing now. And so, yeah, it was a very press-led launch and that had been our strategy from the get-go. Now we're figuring out
• 35:38
  you know, what are the levers we need to pull to get people to a conversion? And I love all that stuff and just figuring out now that we're actually selling, like what is that path to purchase? Because every brand and customer is different. Beauty especially is very different and hair care.
• 35:53
  has its own nuances. And then you have to add in that layer of like textured hair, which has another layer and really figuring out who your best customer is, because we have all sorts of people coming to us wanting to buy our product, not just women who have textured hair, women who have straight hair. We're like, Oh my God, I really want to buy this. Like, is it going to work for me?
• 36:11
  And so we have to really figure out exactly what our funnels look like for the right people, who's going to be our long-term, like valuable customer that is like loyal to the brand that we can really, really focus on. And that's just a lot of trial and error. Obviously, we're very digitally focused. We have our own e-com, we have our retail partnerships, we will have more retail partnerships in the future, which I think is a really great way for us to go to market in other countries too.
• 36:40
  I think having a retail partner is, you know, not just for the commercial side of things, but as a marketing channel as well is huge. And so we always look at our planning and our plans for distribution with that lens is like who is going to be the best marketing partner for us. And those are, and that's very country specific. You're really looking at, you know, each country and each region with a different lens to figure out what that looks like.
• 37:06
  And yeah, I think just working through what our social strategy looks like, what our content looks like, because we don't want to look and feel like other brands. But at the same time, there are formulas that work that you kind of have to play into. And so our biggest challenge is really figuring out that balance between like direct response and what works, but also maintaining the brand integrity and our kind of
• 37:34
  brand vision and our look and feel because that's what differentiates us. And as soon as you kind of cross that line, it's like very hard to go back. So that's a huge challenge, especially for a brand that, you know, we have very lofty projections and goals and all of those things. So yeah, something that we're
• 37:55
  Yeah, totally. It's so true. Once you've, you know, compromised that integrity, it is hard to go back. I'm wondering what your biggest driver for growth is at the moment now that you've kind of used all of that launch excitement. You're a few months in, well, six months in, quite frankly, you're further into the track. What's working for you at the moment? Yeah, I think what's working for us because we did have that initial big push. It's like a lot of people have seen us, a lot of people know about us and they're kind of,
• 38:24
  you know, hovering around the brand. But what's working really well for us is actually, and this is going to sound so boring, but influencers. Influencers.
• 38:37
  But it's that thing that it works, right? If you get the formula right, then it works. Yeah. And I think that formula is so different for every brand. For us, you know, we have that big push at the beginning. And so now it's about like finding the right influencers or influentials who are the trigger point and that conversion point for people. So it's like who is an authority that people trust and believe?
• 38:59
  that says, oh, hey, I love this brand. And someone's gone, oh, yeah, I've seen that. Now that you've said you love it, I'm going to go and buy it. And that's what's working for us really well. It's just the hard part and the grunt work is in finding who those people are and doing that in a very cost-effective way
• 39:14
  which is difficult because you have to know that they work first before you're able to invest a lot. But that is definitely what's working for us. And part of that strategy means that you almost have to spray and pray a little bit. So we do a lot of gifting. We do a lot of send outs to micro-influencers, to celebrities, to influencers who have really big followings. And a lot of the time, well, actually 100% of the time that a really big influencer or celebrity has posted about us, it's not been paid.
• 39:42
  So they're organic brand fans. And then we're able to see if we're getting a lift and go, okay, cool. That's someone we need to invest in, someone we need to invest in because their audience trusts them and their own authority in this space, even if you might not think that they are. And that is something that I really wanted for the brand, which is hair care influencers are amazing, but I really wanted to be able to capture the audience and that influential person who is not a hair care influencer.
• 40:10
  And that has worked very well for us because often it's someone who almost never posts about beauty or posts about hair that is doing the best for us. So, yeah, something we're learning along the way. And we just need to find more of that profile and that person who has that style of audience where they're just like hanging on every word that that person says. But they don't necessarily have to be a hair authority.
• 40:34
  That's so interesting, but it actually really makes sense because if you're going to, you know, a hair care influencer or hair influencer or beauty influencer who's posting product after product after product after product, it's easy to get missed in the noise. It's such the channel is saturated. Whereas if you go into someone who is actually in a different category, who's able to be like, oh, hang on a second. I just found something that is absolute gold. You all need to hear about it. Then it makes total sense.
• 41:02
  Love that. Yeah, absolutely. Great insight. What does the future look like? What's coming next?