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Why Fulton & Roark Skipped DTC and Sold Wholesale First · Honest Ecommerce

• speaker-0: I think one of the things that consumers fail to appreciate, samples are really expensive to make. And you know, as a bootstrapped company, it wasn't just a matter of is this a good return on our investment as we try to grow this business, but is it the best return on investment, right? There's just only so much cash. speaker-1: Honest ECommerce is a weekly podcast where we interview direct-to-consumer brand founders and leaders to find out what it takes to start, grow, and scale an online business today. Honest ECommerce is proudly produced by Electric Eye, a Shopify Plus partner helping e-commerce brands sell more with strategic design and development. Visit electriqueye.io for more information. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest E-Commerce. Today I'm welcoming the show Kevin Keller. Kevin is one of the co-founders of the luxury fragrance company Fulton and Rourke. Kevin, welcome to the show. I'm excited to have you. So for those that are not familiar with the brand, ⁓ could you quickly talk about the types of products you're bringing to market over there? speaker-0: Thanks, Tracy. Sure, yeah, we're best known for fragrances and we have a couple of different versions of that. We have a solid fragrance, which is a wax-based fragrance. ⁓ so unlike a traditional spray fragrance, it's you can almost picture the consistency of a hard lip balm. So as opposed to spraying, you swipe on top, apply to your pulse points, and ⁓ are able to go from there. And then our our biggest product is ⁓ an extrait deprofum. So it's very similar to any other spray fragrance you'd be familiar with. The only difference with our line is ⁓ that they're at a more concentrated level. So ⁓ when you hear those terms like EDT and EDC or de cologne or de parfum, those are all just about ⁓ the concentration of the fragrance. So the extrait is at about double the industry average. So it performs a little bit differently. We we you know offer fragrances ⁓ that are a little bit outside of the the mainstream, ⁓ and then we ⁓ have ⁓ a few accompanying products like ⁓ bar soap, sentiodorants, pear oil, that sort of thing. speaker-1: Absolutely. I guess can you take me back in time? where does your love for fragrance and and perfumery start? And then how does that kind of pivot into, you know, I think this is gonna be ⁓ a a career, this is gonna be a business for me. speaker-0: Yeah, I wonder how dissimilar mine is from anyone who didn't grow up in in ⁓ Paris or or Gross in that I just grew up absolutely loving fragrance. I as a little kid, I was fascinated. My my dad was a a guy who always wore fragrance and my sister, who's ten years older than me, she was a a model and very much into fashion. And so I think for me gravitating more toward the fragrance side was what interested me more. So from a little kid I was into it. And then, you know, that passion just kind of developed as I got older. And it it wasn't until I was in my late twenties that I thought about ⁓ really going after it ⁓ you know, a as a career. But I'm glad it did. speaker-1: ⁓ that's amazing. And let's talk about ⁓ going after it as a career. ⁓ back in twenty thirteen, you co-founded the company with ⁓ eleven thousand dollars and a belief that perfumery should be both deeply personal and distinctly American. Other than that, you know, amazing outlook. ⁓ what else did it take? What was going on back then? speaker-0: Yeah, well, ⁓ you know, like so many things, I think if we knew how complex, how daunting it might be, ⁓ I'm not sure if we would have tackled it, but I'm I'm glad we didn't know any better. ⁓ like so many ⁓ adventures in life, I suppose. ⁓ yeah, we ⁓ I met my partner while I was in grad school. We were both into fragrance, we both loved ⁓ some design theory, thinking thinking through problems ⁓ with a different lens was sort of one of those things that ⁓ both ⁓ we both got excited about, which sounds like nothing, but ⁓ you know, what that meant for us with fragrance was ⁓ we felt like there was so much sameness in the market. And and so much of it was just, you know, variations on the same thing we'd smelled a million times, in the same format we'd seen a million times. And we wondered if there wasn't some opportunity there to to try something different. And so, you know, our first product was the solid fragrance. Not because we thought that that was a you know the all be all and end all of fragrance or what all people were going to want in the future, but rather for people who travel, for people who get ready at the gym every morning or ⁓ go straight from work to you know after work activities, ⁓ the bar or dinner or whatever, the idea that a glass bottle ⁓ would be your only option just didn't seem like the move. And so we started with that product because we thought it was the product that we all needed the most. And then, you know, a lot of it has been following what our customers wanted from there and following what got us excited. So some of those accompanying products, ⁓ a lot of those came from wanting things that ⁓ we just felt like we're missing in the market. speaker-1: Absolutely. And you have a bit of a unique story compared to some of the other guests that have been on the show where your kind of go to market strategy, ⁓ direct consumer wasn't really a part of that model. So how did you, you know, how did you originally hit the market? ⁓ what was your kind of growth plan then? And then we can talk a bit about when direct consumer came in. speaker-0: Yeah, I know you're right. And it's one of those ⁓ lessons for me that ⁓ I like to remind myself of that we can be wrong about a lot of things and still do okay. and maybe we weren't wrong at the very beginning, but our our hypothesis as we were getting started was we are a company you've never heard of offering a product you've never heard of in fragrances that you're not familiar with. The idea that people are going to want to go straight to the website and buy something wholly unfamiliar in every regard just seemed crazy to us. And what our strategy was was we better be in a place where there's excellent customer service, the kinds of retailers where, you know, you walk in and someone immediately acknowledges you, asks you what you're up to, what you're looking for, and builds that rapport where at the end of your shopping, a after you've bought you know, a couple pair of jeans or or a suit or whatever that might be, they say, ⁓ by the way, ⁓ have you seen this? Are you are you interested in this? And so that was our initial strategy. ⁓ we just thought, yeah, we we've got to introduce ourselves. We need high touch because the containers themselves, while they're beautiful in in my opinion, they're fairly minimalistic. I mean they're just, you know, a a ⁓ cast metal design, very, very slim. ⁓ you know, about the size of a Zippo lighter or something. And so we thought if these just sit on the shelf, ⁓ even at a big box store, no one is going to have any idea what they are. So that was why we started that way. But, you know, we ev eventually pivoted, of course, but it was it we just felt like it was the only way to get started. speaker-1: What is the next big idea that could change your business? A pricing change? A new bundling strategy? Adding subscriptions? Tweaking your shipping offer? Most brands make these decisions based on gut feel. They roll out the change, hope for the best, and have no real idea if it helped or hurt their business. IntelliGems fixes that. It is an AI-powered testing platform that brings CRO level clarity to the decisions that actually move the needle. Not just button colors and headlines, but the big stuff. Pricing, offers, shipping, new apps, even major site changes. Brands like Ridge, Jones Road, and True Classics are using IntelliGems to test their most important decisions and see exactly how each one of those impacts profit before they commit. 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The reality was that we were getting ⁓ featured in a GQ article. It was a really big piece for us. I mean, we were still really small. We're getting featured in this GQ piece, and you know, it was in print this makes me feel very old. back when in print magazines were still a big deal and you know were exciting for us. So Gonna be in this piece, we can't wait. And the reporter says, ⁓ by the way, we're gonna do a digital version, of course. what's the link for people to buy your stuff? And I said, ⁓ we we don't have one. ⁓ we don't sell it online. And he said, Well, you better, you know, I've this is this is the way we work. We've we've got to have a link, ⁓ just so we can. It's it's almost rude to our customers. You guys aren't available in very many markets yet. People need to have a way to buy it. And so we said, You're right. And he said, I you know, I really do need a link. And so I think that was on a Thursday and we said, Cool, give us a couple of days. And over the weekend basically, with you know, some dental floss and and toothpicks, we built a website. ⁓ you know, we had a website, but we didn't have any e com. So we got that all set up and ⁓ we waited and ⁓ you know, all of a sudden, day one, we get some purchases. And we think, well, that's exciting, I guess, except that you know, these people have never smelled the fragrance. And so, you know, I'd like to say that I write well about the fragrance, that it helps give people a sense of of what it's gonna be, but surely it's gonna be like a seventy percent return rate. We're gonna lose money really fast this way. And to our amazement, we had almost no returns. And and then we we were featured in this ⁓ website called Uncrate. And it was the biggest day ever for years for us where it was just you know, flying off the shelves, we're kinda panicked. We still had day jobs and all of a sudden it's selling like crazy. And again, we have this moment like, ⁓ no, the ret and and after a couple years ⁓ of looking at it, always kind of biting our nails saying, when is this shoe gonna drop, we were averaging less than a two percent return rate or exchange rate. So it's it's pretty great. speaker-1: That's amazing. And it's funny that they were like, No, you need a website. And you're like, We're gonna we're gonna figure it out. ⁓ was that first website? ⁓ you know, we've got a lot of technologists that listen to the show. Was it was it built on Shopify or was was it something else? speaker-0: It was built on Squarespace, which was not the right template. And and I will say, you know, we we had a great creative agency behind us that we were working with. They were old friends of mine who were just very kind, metally creative, great, great folks. and, you know, with what we told them, which was, Hey, we need a website that looks really nice, that tells our story, and then directs people to go find us out in the world, Squarespace was great. But as e com became a big deal, we needed a lot more complexity. We wanted a lot more you know, horsepower. And so pretty quickly had to ⁓ pivot and totally rebuild our our website on Shopify ⁓ you know, within a year or so. Absolutely. That was no fun at all, but we got through it. speaker-1: Migrations are are maybe the ⁓ worst things that e-commerce brands have to experience. And luckily, my agency is really good at them. And so we are we're there to help them do it the right way the first time. Most brands outgrow their legacy choices long before they switch. Bad platform decisions do not fail all at once. They fail slowly, then suddenly. 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Multi-brand operators like Mark Fisher have migrated multiple brands and drastically reduced the time required to execute CRM marketing. And brands using email and SMS together inside Clavio are seeing massive ROI compared to running channels in separate platforms. The big unlock is simplicity and scale at the same time. Clavio is built for marketers, not for engineers. It is built for online businesses just like yours, and it is built for where e-commerce is going, not where it was five years ago. If you're running email and SMS across multiple tools, or you're on a legacy platform and thinking about your next phase of growth, it's probably time to look at Clavio. Go to Clavio.com slash honest and see why hundreds of thousands of brands have already made the switch. That's Clavio.com slash honest K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.com slash H-O-N-E-S-T. With this like direct to consumer growth strategy kind of coming out of nowhere, you're obviously getting this press, which I can't stress hard enough to the audience that earned media, especially from ⁓ something like a GQ, is worth a lot of eyes. And that like definitely will get traffic to the website. Now, did you kind of just double down in that lane? Like, okay, this worked. We're gonna continue to to go for these PR pieces. And that's gonna be how we sell stuff online? Or did you start to ⁓ get into, you know, email or retargeting? Like, you know, how how did you kind of get the flywheel started? speaker-0: Yeah, you know, email's been a huge part of our strategy because ⁓ you know, one thing that we've never done is switch over to an Amazon ⁓ model at all. We we keep our products off of Amazon as best we can or really any third party websites. And so our ⁓ thought there was we want to have a deep and meaningful relationship with our customers. this may sound corny, but fragrances ⁓ A very personal thing. And and you know, you're often as the way we see our job is to help you feel like you're the best version of yourself. And so, you know, what we're asking you is like w what is it that you want to feel? How do you how do you want to be perceived? Like what what's your vibe today, right? And and we can help find a fragrance that really accentuates that and makes you feel like your best self. And so all that to say, we we wanna chat, we wanna have. ⁓ relationship with our customers and it's something that we knew we couldn't do well if we were leaving that ⁓ to ⁓ a company like Amazon where we were not allowed to have as much contact. So really those early emails were more about just building a relationship, not meant to be super transactional. We wanted to tell our story. We were genuinely thankful that people rolled the dice with us. So over time though, of course ⁓ as that email list grew, that was super helpful. And we've always seen it as ⁓ you know, almost like four points, right? So we've we wanted it be an excellent retail source that ⁓ helped, you know, ⁓ sort of prove our our company as as being worthwhile, as as reputable, that sort of thing. We wanted a lot of earned media, like you said, because there's it's just helps reinforce everything. ⁓ and then, you know, we wanted to grow our e com. Because ⁓ the bigger our e-com, the better our website, the more customers we had who were aware of us in the world, ⁓ the better our stores performed. And then that that last piece was we, you know, through email marketing, we really wanted to cultivate that relationship with our customers so that they could trust us, that they would try a new product, that they would tell people about it. ⁓ and and you know, they they for years have been the people who've created content for us and and you know, ⁓ helped sell us to more people as a bootstrap company. ⁓ you know, they were a huge part of the marketing efforts and not just ⁓ the revenue. speaker-1: You have prepped all year, and all that hard work is paying off. Your store is converting, the ads are working, and this is shaping up to be your best holiday season. But your 3PL can't keep up. Orders are backing up, customers are asking where their stuff is, the reviews are starting to turn. All that hard work, all that momentum, undone by a fulfillment partner that can't scale with you. This is a nightmare scenario, and it happens to brands every holiday season. Enter eFulfillment service. EFulfment Service is the 3PL that scales with you. They are family owned, they've been in business for over 25 years, and they're built specifically for growing direct-to-consumer brands. There are no setup fees, no minimums, and no long-term contracts. You only pay for what you use. If you're scared your 3PL can't keep up this holiday season, now is the time to reach out to eFulfillment service. Go to eFulfillment service.com/slash honest and get up to eight weeks of account fees completely waived. That's EF. U L F I L L ⁓ E N T S E R V I C E dot com slash H O N E S T e Fulfillment Service dot com slash honest. And something that ⁓ is kind of unique to the fragrance game ⁓ i is ⁓ this whole concept of samples, right? And and you guys took a a bit of a different approach there. ⁓ so ⁓ you know, how did you get over kind of the I guess industry standard of not giving away free samples and charging for samples and and how did that affect things? speaker-0: You know, it's it's funny. We knew that we needed to do samples, ⁓ because for years we were this primarily solid fragrance and so we knew the easiest way, of course, to overcome that was to get product in people's hands. But ⁓ we wanted to make sure it was done well, so it took us longer than we wanted. And ⁓ I think one of the things that consumers fail to appreciate, samples are really expensive to make. And you know, as a bootstrapped company, ⁓ it wasn't just a matter of is this a good return on our investment as we try to grow this business, but is it the best return on investment, right? There's just only so much cash. And so dropping, you know, tens of thousands into figuring out sample packs was was daunting. And ⁓ and so we did play around with some free samples and things like that. But what we realized pretty quickly as we were laying things out in in meta ⁓ ad campaigns where we're, you know, trying to promote these samples, was that we actually wanted the people who wanted to pay for samples. Because we and you know, we set it up, we totally borrowed from Warby Parker where we ⁓ you know asked you to put some money up front, but then you got it pack. So, you know, our original sample sets were I think When we were doing solids, it was maybe sixteen or twenty-four dollars, and and then you got that same credit back. So that ⁓ if you bought a second purchase, it was basically like the samples had been free. But we were just asking customers to put some skin in the game, right? Because to to create samples is expensive, and then to send samples is expensive. So we ⁓ were able to ⁓ you know offset our costs, get those customers who Actually cared enough to put some money down. And and then that enabled us to grow way faster than ⁓ we would have expected. And and then what's been interesting is I think we were really early on that. We've seen a lot of other fragrance companies do similar things since. And I think attitudes have shifted about samples in the market. For one thing, I think as people have become, I mean, fragrance is a a fast growing ⁓ category right now. And so people are curious to try new things and they actually want to try a bunch of things. And so I think they recognize, no, this isn't this isn't like going to Costco to see if I want to buy the meatball or whatever. This is I I want to try five different things just because it would be fun to wear five different fragrances and maybe I'll, you know, hate one and and like two and and really love to and that's fine. And so yeah, at this point, ⁓ it feels like ⁓ way much a less of a lift. than it did ⁓ when we first got started asking people to pay for samples. speaker-1: Hey everybody, just a quick reminder. Please like this video and subscribe if you haven't. We're releasing interviews like this every week. So don't miss out. Now back to the interview. Sampling is such a an interesting thing in just the CPG landscape. Obviously, it lends itself very well to ⁓ some of your contemporaries, you know, be it in skincare or makeup or beauty. ⁓ it it's that sample. It's there's a lot of different ways to do it. And I think it also just translates back to there's a lot of different ways to build business and not necessarily do you have to follow any sort of mandate that's out there. You just have to show up every day and make decisions and you'll, you know, the overnight success takes 10 years as they say. True. Now Kevin, is there anything I didn't ask you about today that you think would resonate with our audience? speaker-0: One those things that I find myself talking ⁓ through with people is ⁓ the ability to not get too high or low in these moments. you know, w we Facebook is has been fr I I don't know ⁓ if if you're hearing this from a lot of guests, but a lot of the conversations we've had in the last nine months or so, there's been a lot more volatility in in meta. than we're used to seeing in terms of ⁓ everything from conversion rates to to ⁓ what what those ⁓ rates look like, EuroAS and and so on. And I mean the nice thing about the strategy that we've built by having a a strong ⁓ wholesale side of the business, by having a meaningful relationship with our customers that's not purely transactional, with having ⁓ you know, a really good team, when when those things ⁓ get crazy for a little while, we're able to just roll and and not panic and ⁓ you know, not start making too many fast changes. And so as things have smoothed out over the last couple of months, you know, that's like we we never lost any sleep ⁓ during those times. And and I think, you know, that really comes from feeling like you've you've got a sometimes that is where you like you're talking about the overnight sensation that takes ten years. Sometimes that's the upside of it taking ten years is that you just don't have those moments where you ⁓ or or or you you get past the moments where you think, ⁓ we're absolute geniuses or ⁓ my God, we're we're gonna ruin everything because it was a bad week or a bad month. ⁓ you know, so long as you got more good months than than bad. you know, you can you can work with that. speaker-1: younger businesses care a little too much about like the daily metrics. Yeah. While those can show you maybe there's a mistake happening, it you gotta zoom out to really see like what the health of the business is. And I feel like it does give you some sort of unnecessary mental stress when you're you know, down to the hour of stuff. It's like there are way more important things you as a founder should be focusing on. And specifically talking to meta and advertising and channel partners, it's like that's the first thing you should start outsourcing is to people that that's what they're really good at. And you should stop thinking about it and you should stop stressing about it because what you are uniquely qualified to do as a founder usually is you have a a a very large, outsized passion for the problem that it is your product solves. ⁓ and that's where you should be spending, you know, most of your time. That thousand dollar an hour activity isn't you micromanaging conversion rate within Facebook's back end. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think there's also I think when you do it yourself, there is that moment where you start to feel like a fraud or a bad business person when you don't know the answer to every single question anymore because you've you've grown to the point where ⁓ you know you're not looking at every metric, at every ⁓ new account a and so on. And for me, that made me insecure for a while. And then, you know, eventually I realized Obviously I wanna know the important numbers here. I wanna know what's what's going on, but also the fact that I can't tell you everything about the business means probably that I'm using my time more effectively because to your point, Chase, we've we found people who are good at those things. And so now it's not my job to try to have my brain in a hundred different places all the time. And I can I can have it down to a manageable twenty five different places and you know, that's that's progress. speaker-1: Absolutely. Delegating is one of the hardest things for an entrepreneur to learn and it it it takes a different amount of time for each of us, I guess. Yeah. Sure. Awesome. Kevin, you talked earlier and throughout this about the quality of your products and how much time, love, and energy that you put into them. If I'm listening to this and I also enjoy fragrance or I want to check something out, maybe buy it for my boyfriend or a loved one, where should I go? What should I do? speaker-0: Yeah. Best place to go is Fulton and Rourke.com. That's F-U-L-T-O-N and R O A R K dot com. ⁓ we have all of our fragrances there. Like I said, what we talk about when we talk about American fine fragrance is kind of trying to look at fragrance from a uniquely American perspective. Not not that that's a better perspective, but it's it's our genuine, authentic perspective. So we're looking at different fragrances, ⁓ you know, different formats, different ingredients that maybe you're not used to. And then yeah, start with a a sample set. ⁓ We have discovery sets where you can build them yourself, find the scents that speak to you. ⁓ and and then, you know, from there, ⁓ take some time with them, wear them around. ⁓ Ask your boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, or even your your friends what what they think. ⁓ because, you know, it's one thing to smell a fragrance on paper, but what really matters is how it smells on you. So ⁓ yeah, get the sample set, take a little time with it, and then figure out what you like and and move from there. speaker-1: Awesome. Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing all those amazing insights. speaker-0: Yeah, thanks for having me, Chase. It was fun.