Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Fave hits: The blueprint to building a $100 million brand, with Hero Founder Ju Rhyu (part 1)

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Fave hits: The blueprint to building a $100 million brand, with Hero Founder Ju Rhyu (part 1) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

0:00
Hey, it's Dune here. This is just a quick message to let you know that for the next two weeks, we're bringing you a roundup of our favorite episodes that you might've missed the first time around. Episodes from women like Leslie Carls, the founder of Midday Squares, Ju Ru, the founder of Hero Cosmetics, and Michelle Grant, the founder of Lively. I hope you enjoy these episodes as much as I did recording them. And if you learned something, please do shout about it by posting it to your Instagram stories.
0:30
This is Juru for Female Startup Club. Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. I'm your host, Doona Oshin, and joining me on the show today is Juru, founder of Hero. Hero.
0:54
Hero makes super-powered skincare products to put you back in control of your skin and to help restore your confidence. And they're best known for their Mighty Patch acne patches. And here's a super fun fact about the brand. They sell a box every 15 seconds with over 2 million boxes sold in over 8,500 retail doors.
1:16
In this episode, we're covering why they decided to launch the brand exclusively through Amazon, how she went about finding her manufacturer, and what they do today to drive crazy growth. This is Ju for Female Startup Club. Ju, welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, Ju, and I'm so excited to be here.
1:39
Me too. Can you start by introducing yourself, telling us a little bit about who you are and what your business is?
1:48
Sure. So I'm the co-founder and CEO of Hero Cosmetics. If you've never heard of us, we're most known for our Mighty Patch Acme Patches. We sell, fun fact, we sell a box every 15 seconds with over 2 million boxes sold in over 8,000 stores. We have been in business for about three years. And fun fact about me, I actually live in Paris
2:11
But my company is based in New York. So I kind of joke that I have the, you know, a very long commute because usually I'm going to New York once a month for work. But obviously, given sort of the health pandemic, I've been able to do that as much this year. But normally I'm I kind of split my time between Paris and New York.
2:31
Wow. Every 15 seconds. That is crazy stuff. I love those kinds of statistics. Holy moly. Wow. I want to go back to life before you got started with Hero to talk about what you were up to, what you were doing and what kind of led to that moment where you actually thought, I'm going to start something now. Yeah. I mean, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. My dad is an entrepreneur. So I sort of
2:58
You know, I grew up with that as an example. But then I ended up going more the corporate route. I actually got my MBA in New York at Columbia Business School. And then I after that, I worked for a series of I joke that I worked for some of the world's biggest companies. And then I left I left it all to start my own small company. But I worked for Kraft Foods and brand management. I worked American Express.
3:26
I actually worked at Samsung in Korea, which brought me to Seoul as an expat for two years. And that's actually where I discovered the acne patches. So it was while I was on an international assignment and I was living in Korea, breaking out. And then I noticed a lot of people in Korea walking around with these patches on their faces and.
3:47
I asked around about what they were. Someone told me they were for acne. I just started to give it a try. And I was just so amazed at how well they worked. And then immediately I started wondering why I was learning about it at that moment and not like 15 years ago and why it wasn't more readily available in the US. And then that sort of gave me the spark of like, hey, this could be a business idea.
4:11
That is so cool. Oh, my gosh. It's funny how Korean beauty is just so ahead of the rest of the world in those kind of innovations. Yes. When you had that idea and you kind of had that moment of, OK, I'm going to turn this into something. How did you go then about validating the idea to a new market and kind of thinking, OK, will this actually work in America and the world?
4:34
Yeah, I mean, one of the first things I did was do research. So I immediately started researching on the Internet to see if there actually were products and brands like this that existed in the U.S. I went on Amazon, I did Google search. And then what I discovered was that the product did exist, actually. There were like maybe one or two brands that had hydrocolloid patch products.
4:58
for acne, but they weren't beauty brands. It was like, they were like medical brands, like band-aid brands that sold at Walgreens in the band-aid aisle. And so when I did the research, I was like, you know what, I think there's opportunity here to introduce this product as a beauty brand. I thought there was room in the market. And then I immediately started looking for manufacturers just to kind of get samples and see if I could establish a relationship. And then in
5:27
Every sort of either cosmetic, like basically every cosmetic manufacturer, you have to put the name of the manufacturer on the back of the box. So I went to a pharmacy. I bought up like so, you know, all these different types of acne patches, flipped over the box. And then I took note of the manufacturer names and.
5:47
I Googled them, I cold emailed them. Sometimes I called them to see if I could get some samples and I told them I have this idea. So those are the two things that I did to start. At first, I did the research to see if I thought that there was actually room in the market for this idea. And then the second one was I started reaching out to manufacturers to see if I could work with them to really concept out my idea.
6:14
And what were they saying to you when you were reaching out? Were they like interested in, you know, having someone come on board to create a new brand for a different market? And what was it that they were looking for in a partner to actually build a brand? I mean, actually a lot of them didn't even reply to me. I'm sure, you know, it's like some random person sending them a cold email, like wanting, wanting samples of their products. But some of them did reply to me and it's just, it was kind of luck actually because the manufacturer that, that,
6:43
I think like two or three manufacturers ended up replying to me. And then one of those we still work with and they make like, like the best quality hydrocolytic acne patches in Korea, in my opinion. And I was lucky because my email landed with the person who was in charge of international sales. And so he was really interested in expanding his international business and exploring new markets. And so for him, you know, it benefited him because it would help
7:12
his business and then it would also help him look good if he could find the right partner to really tap into the U.S. I think they had tried the U.S. on their own but they couldn't really break through and so I think he was interested in working with an American who's also you know I'm Korean American so who's also Korean who could kind of straddle the two so yes I think he was eager to find a new contact.
7:38
Yeah, amazing. Wow. And so you have the guy, you're like, okay, let's start sampling and getting the products ready. What was that timeline like? And how long did it take until you had a product where you were like, okay, I'm actually able to place an order now and get started for real? It probably took about a year. So there was initial contact, there was a period of getting
8:06
There's a period of working with them to kind of refine the samples and to kind of customize the samples. And then there are like logistical administrative things like I actually have two co-founders. So coming up with the company name, incorporating ourselves, getting a.
8:24
You know, maybe in Europe, it's like a VAT number or UK, it's like a VAT number. But in the US, it would be an EIN number, getting like legal documents in place. So just getting all that stuff in place and then going from sort of idea to launch probably took almost like 12 months.
8:41
And so we launched, yeah, we launched September 2017. So and actually in my experience now, I've noticed that launching new products does take about 12 months. So I think that's kind of like a good rule of thumb in terms of if you're thinking about launching a product, how long it would take. Yeah, that's a great insight that that's what you've noticed now, now having launched multiple products. How were you funding the business until that point?
9:08
We are self-funded. We, you know, we're, we were totally bootstrapped. So myself and my two partners, we each put in like X number of dollars into a joint, like a company bank account. And so it was good because it forced us to really focus on being profitable from the very, very beginning. We are not a VC backed company. And so, you know,
9:34
We couldn't pay ourselves like fancy salaries. We couldn't spend too much on design. We couldn't spend too much on fancy PR firms or anything like that. So it was really like,
9:45
you know, boots to the ground, really being resourceful. And we're still bootstrapped to this day. So I think focusing on that profitability really helped us. And it actually makes us more attractive as like as an asset or as a business to other investors. That's what I've noticed.
10:05
Yeah, absolutely. Wow, that's so exciting. So cool. It's a really nice segue to get into talking about specifically how you launched and how you brought the brand to market.
10:19
Yes, so we took a different route than a lot of other consumer brands. We launched on Amazon first. So kind of related to your previous question about how we proved out product market fit, we use Amazon because again, we didn't have all this money to put up a DTC site and to find a 3PL and to do the design. So the most resource efficient channel for us was to put our product on Amazon.
10:48
to see if people actually wanted a product like this. So it's really easy. You sign up for a seller's account.
10:55
You create a product page, you put your images on there, you put your content on there, you make sure all your copy and descriptions are SEO optimized. You can even send your products into the Amazon Fulfillment Center so that they do the fulfillment for you. So you don't have to go looking for your own fulfillment center. So we use Amazon to prove out kind of the initial product market fit. And then, you know, we proved it out very quickly. Within three months, we had sold out of our initial inventory. Yeah.
11:23
Which was how many pieces or how many boxes? 10,000, 10,000 units. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So were you like directing people to Amazon? You were still doing your marketing as per usual. Yes. Yes.
11:37
Okay, right. Got it. Right. So, you know, with an Amazon strategy, there are three things I think that are very important. One is you can advertise within the Amazon ecosystem. So Amazon has their own paid media platform that you can leverage to, you know, boost awareness of your products. Yeah.
11:56
The other thing that you need to do is focus on organic content. So, yeah, again, focus on like the product titles and then the copy and the description so that you have the right keywords. So that when someone's searching for a similar product, your product can show up in search results. And then the third part is you need to do you need to focus on marketing outside of the Amazon ecosystem. So I focus a lot.
12:20
in the beginning months on PR. So I did a lot of PR outreach, influencer outreach also, and then made sure everyone pointed back to our Amazon page. So at that time, we were just really focused on Amazon, getting all our marketing to, you know, point back to Amazon, getting,
12:38
I think we built like a Shopify, like a one page site and then with a product image description, and then even that page linked to Amazon. So we were like a hundred percent focused on Amazon, getting all kind of marketing to lead to that, to that channel. So that's, you know, I get the question a lot, like, how do you start out on Amazon? How do you get sales? And that's kind of what you do. You have to
13:04
I think you just really have to focus on it and then get press, get influencers, get everyone to really point to this one channel. Yeah. Wow. I mean, 10,000 after three months, that's pretty impressive. Were you then like, OK, now we should make our own site and start selling D2C through our own Shopify or our own platform? Yeah, that happened. So we launched on Amazon September 2017 and then we launched on our D2C site.
13:31
June of 2018. So that's almost...
13:37
Yeah, it's like eight, nine months or something after is when we launched our DTC site. And part of it was just resources. Part of it was money because, again, it costs money to put up a website to make to design it and make it look nice. And then you have to find it through PL to do the fulfillment. And so part of it was just having the time, having the resources in terms of people and having the cash to make it work.
14:02
Yeah. And in that time, were you also then starting to find the retail partners and building out that retail side of the business? Or did that come later?
14:11
That came before, actually. So the cadence was we launched on Amazon September of 2017. I immediately started pitching retailers. And then Anthropologie was the first retailer to take us on in January. So like three to four months later, we were in Anthropologie. That pilot had gone really, really well. So they launched us nationally nationally.
14:34
And then as we started, as I started focusing on PR, I started getting a lot of inbound requests from retailers. So like Neiman Marcus emailed me wanting our products. I think Goop, American Eagle, Riley wrote like there were, I had a lot of inbound requests because they would read about us or see us on Instagram. And then I'd get an email saying, oh, we want to carry your products. So that happened a lot. Some of that actually happened before DTC site.
15:04
uh specialty retail and then ddc and then a year later we launched into the mass channel oh wow gosh and what do you think was the specific thing that got them interested in your brand was it because there wasn't a lot of other competitors in the space or was it something else
15:23
I think they, so buyers are very trend savvy. Like it's their job because it's their job to spot kind of what's new and it's their job to curate things that they think their customers would want. And so I think acne patches, I think because of K-Beauty, a lot of the buyers knew acne patches were kind of a emerging trend. But at that point in time, the only options really that were available were Korean brands.
15:50
And so I think they liked the idea that there was an acne patch made specifically for the American audience with a company that was really going to support it with marketing and education. And then for them, you know, I think acne is, unfortunately, a lot of people still struggle from acne and everyone's still looking for like the magic bullet for their acne. So I think A, they saw it as an emerging trend and then B, it was something that their customers wanted.
16:18
still struggled with and were looking for solutions for. Yeah, effective solutions, totally. And now that you're, you know, a few years in, you've gone through, I'm sure, lots of ups and downs and tried lots of different things in marketing. What do you find that's working for you now? And given that you are so big, how do you continue to, you know, scale and acquire new customers at scale?
16:44
Yeah, I know growth as you continue to grow, it just sort of gets more complicated and harder. But so, I mean, so we started out with one product and it kind of became a cold product. And now what we're doing is we're building a whole acne regimen and we're building out our product portfolio to include different products for the entire life cycle of your pimple.
17:08
So we have the patches for like when you have that whitehead, we have a microneedle patch for when it's underground. We have products for the discoloration that happens after your pimple. So we're kind of building out this routine. And then actually what we've noticed that's interesting is that every time we launch a new product, that's not, that's not a patch. We gain a ton of new customers. So we launched two products. One was lightning wand, which I should grab it.
17:38
It's like a brightening serum in the stick. Looks really cool. And then we launched a rescue balm, which is like kind of our version of Neosporin. It's a healing balm for your pimples. When we launched those two SKUs, which are non-patch items, like over 70% of the customers that were buying those products at launch were new customers, totally new customers to the brand.
17:59
So what I realized is every time we launch an incremental new product, it brings incrementally new customers. So that's a great way to acquire. And then in terms of the scale, I think retail partnerships also are great because if you can partner with a national or global retailer, that brand halo and that brand awareness really just helps your company overall. So those are two things that we're looking at.
18:27
Yeah, that's so interesting about launching the new product. And I guess, you know, you'd gone from having that kind of one SKU store that you were able to easily divert all of your attention to and then direct all of your attention to rather. And then adding in those new products, you're kind of like, oh, this is an interesting insight. Do you think that's because people, there are some people who just aren't kind of interested in wearing the patch, but they know about your brand or they'd heard about your brand? Yeah.
18:56
Yeah, I think so. I think there are some people where, for example, with the lightning wand, it's a brightening serum that helps with the hyperpigmentation. And there are probably a lot of people who have hyperpigmentation and are interested in the product and the format, but they don't necessarily have acne because, you know, you get like sunspots or age spots, or you can get dark spots from like a lot of different things. So
19:18
I think, yeah, my guess is that we're getting people who are not necessarily interested in the patches because maybe they don't break out, but they're interested in having, you know, the rescue bomb because it's sort of a healing cream or they're interested in lightning wand because they suffer from sunspots or aid spots or something like that.
19:37
That's so interesting. And because I also imagine that people who use your, you know, the patch product, they would tell their friends about it, but then their friends would be like, oh, I'm suffering from another issue that's related, but it's not the same. So of course I can't use that. Oh, that's amazing. It's kind of genius. Love that for you.
20:07
would be people who already know our brand. But yeah, I was very pleasantly surprised that like over 70% are totally new customers to the franchise, which I think is awesome. So awesome. When you look back on the last few years, obviously there's a lot of brands that start, they don't continue. There's a lot of different brands in the beauty industry in general. What is it that you attribute your success to? And why do you think it's been, you know, to the success that it has reached?
20:38
That's a good question. I mean, I think we got kind of lucky because we found a product that actually provides a real solution to a real problem. So I think in cosmetics and beauty, it's kind of hard because there are a lot of products that...
20:54
They'll say, oh, it helps keep your skin hydrated or helps with fine lines, but it's hard to see the difference. It's hard to see the noticeable difference quickly. But with our patch products, you see the difference sometimes literally overnight. You'll see the gunk. You'll see the patch absorb out the gunk, and then your pimple will literally be flattened overnight.
21:19
And, and those kinds of results, I think, wow people because they're not used to products that do that like so quickly. So I think, you know, we got lucky because we have a product that is an actual solution to a very real problem and you can see and feel the visible results. Unlike, I guess, a lot of skincare products. And then, yeah. And then I think, you know, we also try, we kind of hit the mark with a lot of our messaging because we're clean and.
21:49
we're vegan, you know, we have certain values that people now care about that a lot of the other kind of incumbent brands weren't really talking about. Totally. And if I'm to ask you the same kind of question, but on, you know, just relating to you as an entrepreneur and building this business, what do you think it is about yourself that you can attribute that success to? Or maybe the better question is, what's your superpower
22:21
That's a good question. I think one of my superpowers is I have a good sense for product. And I think it probably comes partly from intuition, but partly from my training at Kraft Foods, because I used to, when I was working there, one of my favorite things to do was to launch new products. And there was a lot of research that goes in, and ideation and brainstorming and creativity.
22:45
But I think I have that. I think I have a good gut sense in terms of what will do well and what won't do well. And I mean, so far, all of our products have been like hits. So I think that's definitely a superpower. And then probably the other one is, I think generally I can hire pretty well. Like, you know, in an interview, because your team is so important as you're building your company.
23:12
And we have a really great team. We've had no turnover, basically, like no layoffs or not. Sorry, no, no one has left our company like voluntarily. And I don't know, I think maybe it's that same intuition. But when I interview people, like I kind of I can get like a good sense of yes, they're a fit. No, they're not a fit. And so we've created a great team so far. Love that. How big is your team, by the way?
23:38
we're 15 going on 20 very soon. Oh my gosh. Wow. All in New York? All in New York. Yeah. I'm mostly, except for myself. I live in Paris and then my co-founder lives in Seattle. Amazing. What does the future look like? What's coming up next that you can shout about?
23:57
Ooh. Okay. So we have a ton of innovation in the pipeline. I'm really excited for some of the products that we're launching next year. Judging by the success of our non-patch products, we're going to be doing a lot more non-patch products. And I think it's going to be a hit because we see a lot of white space in the category.
24:17
then yeah, I mean, it's just gonna be really focused on distribution, really deepening our relationships with current retail partners, setting the stage for 2022.
24:30
and continuing to hire. Like, yeah, we're going to be going on a hiring spree. So we're going to be beefing up our team a lot. I'm also really excited to do a lot of cool marketing starting next year because the first three years we were so scrappy. We just didn't have that money, a lot of money to do anything like crazy. But I'm hoping starting next year, we're going to be able to take a lot more risk with our marketing.
24:54
Sounds exciting. Exciting for everyone who is looking for interesting jobs. They can come and knock on your door. Yeah. Yeah. What advice do you have for women who have a big idea and want to launch their own business?
25:12
I tell people start small. I think people will have these great ideas and then they get very intimidated because they don't know where to start. Like you have this big idea, but how do you get there? So I usually tell people like, just start small. Like whatever your idea is, create a prototype. Just have the goal of like making 10 and selling 10 or making 20 and selling 20.
25:40
It's easier to start something if you break it up into smaller steps. And really, you just have to go and you have to do it. I do talk to a lot of people who have all these amazing ideas, but they never take action. And so it's really, really important to take action. Just do like one, you know, one thing a day and just keep that ball moving. Because, yeah, again, like, you know, obviously we didn't build Hero overnight. It took over three years to get here.
26:10
But you just build a little bit every day. And then suddenly, you know, you might have a big business. Who knows? But I think the most important thing is you have to start and do something. And then it's much easier to start if you start small and just break it down to very small steps. Absolutely. Is that something you learned from your dad as an entrepreneur? Being an entrepreneur? No.
26:36
Not really. I mean, I think from my dad, I learned more kind of like business oriented things like business finance, like the importance of being profitable and managing your cash flow and, you know, having good growth and vendor relationships and things like that are things I've learned from him. I love that.
27:02
Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
27:26
And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
27:49
As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that. Thank you.
28:05
Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
28:30
And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
28:53
As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that. Thank you.