Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / How to finance a brand without giving away equity & overcoming adversity, with Vivian Weyll, Founder of Joie de Viv

Transcript

How to finance a brand without giving away equity & overcoming adversity, with Vivian Weyll, Founder of Joie de Viv · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Vivian Vile for Female Startup Club. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. I'm your host, Doona Roisin, and joining me on the show today is Vivian Vile, the CEO and founder of fine jewelry brand Joie de Vivre.
• 0:26
  After losing her first business through a relationship breakdown, Vivian got straight back in the game working on her second and most cherished jewellery brand, Joie de Vivre. After learning about the jewellery industry and the dark side of gold and diamonds, she set her intentions to create a brand full of transparency, being completely ethical and sustainable.
• 0:46
  She invested $1 million of her own money and started creating her new venture. But what she didn't expect was to launch and be met with zero sales. Absolutely zero. She shares the real heartache of going through major ups and downs in business and how she came out the other side sparkling. Yeah.
• 1:02
  We also talk about a company that's been critical in her success, Wayflyer. They offer revenue-based growth financing for e-commerce brands of up to $500,000 to support inventory purchases and scaling through performance marketing without taking any equity. It's a great solution for brands who are doing well and need cash injections on an ongoing basis. This is Vivian for Female Startup Club.
• 1:27
  Vivian, thank you so much for being on the show today. I am so excited to learn all about your business. I want to go back to the very beginning and hear your origin story and how you got started. Yeah, yeah, of course. Thank you so much for having me. I mean, you were amazing. Your show is amazing. So I'm really excited to be here. Thank you. Thank you so much.
• 1:52
  Alrighty, so you want to know a little bit of my background, how I got started? Yeah, so while my background has been basically for the last 13 years in the art industry, so I was a CEO of a company that I started, launched, and grew with my ex-partner and ex-husband, which is called Storms Publishing, and I was a CEO of a company that I started, launched,
• 2:17
  And basically, my ex-husband is one of the biggest, well, he is the biggest cold glass sculptor in the world today. But it wasn't like that always. So when we first met, I was 22 years old. I came from Brazil. I was a big actress in Brazil.
• 2:34
  And I came to the States to actually go to film school. And we met, you know, started dating and got pregnant. And when I really got in touch with his art, I just fell in love with it. And I was like, I'm going to do this. This guy is a genius. I need to take over his career and make him who he's supposed to be. So I kind of like transitioned from being that artist.
• 3:00
  The artist, the actress that had all those people behind me, you know, building me to being the person that was behind him, building him.
• 3:09
  And that's what I did for, you know, from when I was 22 to when I was about 30 years old. So, you know, eight years. In a few years after we got married, we hired our son. Jack became the biggest cold glass sculptor in the world. We had a little tragic, not a little. We had some really hard things that happened in between where he lost his eyesight. We had to redo the whole business and stuff. But we came up on top. And, uh...
• 3:39
  A few years later, we went through a divorce. So when that was happening, I was the CEO of the company. The company was thriving and we were, you know, doing millions and millions of dollars working.
• 3:56
  Which we never thought was possible because he's one artist, right? It's like scaling like that for one artist that makes artwork. It's very hard. And then when we started that divorce process, I decided that I wanted to create a jewelry line that would feature his work because we had a video that had gotten...
• 4:17
  about 120 million views on Insider about his work. And we were flooded with people from all over the world wanting to buy their work, but they couldn't afford it because his artwork starts at $15,000. So I wanted to make a jewelry line that would feature his work
• 4:36
  And it took about three years of development. So I took all of his large crystal sculptures and made them into little stones and created Viv Storm sign jewelry, which was my previous jewelry line. It was a lot of work, put a lot of money into it, a lot of tears too. And we launched, the day we launched the jewelry line, we sold $170,000 in seven hours.
• 5:04
  Oh my gosh. Whoa. It was insane. And we did not have any digital marketing. Like, like up to that point, everything that I did was, we had a big presence online. I had a massive Facebook page and Instagram page, but everything that we did wasn't to sell anything online. Everything was offline because we're talking about selling $15,000, $100,000, $200,000 pieces of artwork.
• 5:33
  And then next thing you know, we launched this website, which wasn't even like the best thing that you could see out there. And we exploded with no marketing at all. It was basically people that were on our social media waiting for something that they could afford from his work.
• 5:53
  And they just saw that now we had items. They started at $700 instead of $15,000. And we just, we just exploded. So Viv's Storms Fine and Jewelry did amazing for the first year, but there was one problem. We were going through a divorce. So, you know, like, I don't know if you ever went through anything like that, but when you're going through a divorce,
• 6:19
  There is a very crucial two years, you know, after that divorce where everything can happen and some really bad things happen because there's so much changes and we were friends and then we aren't friends anymore. And so.
• 6:38
  At some point, like, he didn't want to make the stones for me anymore. Didn't want to make the glass for me anymore, for me to make my jewelry light. So I had to make a decision. And I was going through as a woman, as a woman, as an entrepreneur, as, you know, a mom and, and, and.
• 6:55
  Dealing with all of that, I had to figure something out for myself where I would find my happiness. Because I just at some point, I just wasn't happy. I was just fighting everyone, everything around me and not living fully. Literally, I just wasn't. I was struggling in every aspect of my life. My jewelry line was selling, but it was a fight. Everything was a fight. So one day...
• 7:22
  I remember sitting in my dining table and then thinking to myself, I just can't do this. I know I have the strength to be able to create something else.
• 7:34
  I know I'm able to, I launched this line was a success. I launched Jack was a success. It's time that I invest on myself now. I invest on something that I create, that I believe in, that has my values and go with that. And that's when I decided that I was going to create a new jewelry line. And everybody was like, you're crazy. How are you going to do that? You know, everything that you've done so far,
• 8:01
  was with Jack and how are you going to launch a different line? And everybody's making jewelry. Like, what do you want to make? How are you going to do it? And I'm like, well, I'm going to do it. I'm just going to figure it out. And that's how Joie de Vivre was born. I wanted to create a different jewelry line that had...
• 8:22
  all the sustainable ideals that I had with Viv Storm's Fine Jewelry, but I wanted to dig in deeper. I wanted to learn more about the jewelry industry. Because again, I got into jewelry kind of like, I just like, it just happened, right? I wanted to make jewelry with that product and it kind of happened. But I didn't really have the knowledge of everything that I was doing, how I was doing, why I was doing and how I could make that better.
• 8:50
  So that's when I dug deep into the sustainable practices of making jewelry and what I really wanted to make my jewelry to be. So Joie de Vivre was created to be a jewelry line for the modern woman.
• 9:04
  It's meant to be for all the women that really care what they are wearing, what they're putting in their body. For the woman that cares that, you know what, if I don't know exactly where this diamond is coming from, it could have been mined by a child. And I'm not OK with a child working anywhere, really, to mine this diamond. If I don't know...
• 9:28
  If this gold is dirty gold or not, which most of the gold out there is dirty gold. And it doesn't matter where it comes from. Like here in America, we have we have mines that have devastated communities. Newt is an example. And there's no such thing as, you know, clean gold. So all of our gold is recycled. And we wanted to create an experience that is where we want to deliver affordable jewelry.
• 9:55
  that is sustainable, that is true, that's traceable, and that makes people proud to say, you know what? I know where this diamond came from because it was created in a lab.
• 10:07
  And then it was also a little bit of a challenge for me because lab-grown diamonds are so new. And a lot of people have this misconception that lab-grown diamonds are zirconias or they're not real or this and that. And I kind of created a mission where I'm going to bring this message out there that...
• 10:29
  the only difference between a lab-grown diamond and a natural diamond truly is only the origin. It's the exact same thing. It's physically, chemically and optically identical. And a lot of people don't know that. So it's important to make people understand that. And I feel like that
• 10:46
  Today in 2020, people are much more aware of what they eat, what they wear, where things are coming from, and how you can make a difference by choosing the right things. So that's kind of like how it happened.
• 11:03
  It sounded amazing and it is amazing. But when we first launched, we were like, okay, it's going to be like this storm. We're going to launch it. We're going to sell $200,000 in the first day. Great. I put a million dollars into Joie David. Wow. Okay. This time I was like, I'm not going to spare a dime. And that was from my pocket, like from my bank account. I didn't take loans, anything. I put $1 million from my bank account into Joie David.
• 11:31
  I didn't spare a dime. We did everything. The website, beautiful. All of the agencies, everybody that works with us, like everything is, you know, planned to be perfect. We had like a soft launch in October of last year, 2019, and there were no sales.
• 11:51
  No sales on the first day. No sales on the second day. Oh, no. No sales on the third day. Or on the second month. Oh, my God. So what are you doing at this point? Well, here I am with, you know, about a million dollars of inventory sitting in my safe. An amazing team. An unbelievable, world-class e-commerce team that I'm paying. And I have an overhead of about $150,000 a month.
• 12:21
  And the money is running out and I don't have anywhere else to get money from. And I'm like, and everybody's telling me, no Vivian, it's a brand new jewelry line, it's a new audience, we need time, and I'm like, okay, I don't have time. So I literally kept pumping money into Juwad, because I truly, truly, truly believed in everything that I was doing.
• 12:45
  And it's literally my baby. It was the company that liberated me. But I truly feel that there was a lot to do with mindset in this one. Because everybody would come to me and say, there's no way you're going to be able to thrive without your ex-husband. There's no way. You guys built everything together. You guys built. And I'm like, no, no, no. I was the person that was behind him, building him. So why can I not thrive? And I feel like that I started believing that.
• 13:15
  I put it out there and it became my reality. So in December, you know, like I used to sell $20,000 in a day. December, that was always sold for Christmas month, $20,000. And we're like...
• 13:30
  You know, I look at my COO and I'm like, we're going to have to figure this out because there's no more credit cards. There's no more lines of credit. There's no more money to draw from. And in January, we're like, OK, we're throwing the towel. There's no more money. We can't. There's nothing more we can do at this point. And I did. I threw in the towel in January. I kind of like turn off and let everybody go. I turn off everything related to money.
• 13:56
  to Joie de Vivre because I just couldn't afford it anymore. And I opened a new company. You know, I had an opportunity of going to the financial business, you know, vertical, which I had nothing to do. But because of my experience as being a CEO, as a CMO and everything that I've built, I went into the financial business vertical. And in two months, we were killing it. We're doing like amazing. So, yeah.
• 14:26
  March comes along, we're doing amazing. And I'm like, okay, great. So let's just launch a 50% sale for Joie de Vivre, sell everything off that we have and just go do this because it's doing amazing. And it was like, okay, here, here I am giving away my child, right? Which is what I love doing. But I mean, I can't afford the child, so I'm going to have to do it.
• 14:51
  So we launched in this was crazy. And when people talk about like law of attraction and all these things, that's when you're like, oh, my God, this thing is real. Because that's when I let go. I said, it's over. I'm letting this go. And I put a sale on the website for 50% off. And in the first month, we were doing no ads. We're doing no marketing, nothing. We just sent a few emails to our email list.
• 15:16
  We sold $50,000 within a week and a half with no marketing spend. And I was like, whoa, hold on a minute. What? What's happening? We found the audience. We had not sold all that amount over since we started. Then May comes along, and then we started selling $20,000 a day. What do you think changed? Yeah.
• 15:46
  My mindset. I feel like, not just that, but I feel, you know, we're in the middle of coronavirus. Everybody's home.
• 15:55
  now we're putting this amazing jewelry line out there at 50% off. All of my, all of my pieces of jewelry are made out of 18 carry gold premium quality diamonds. Now it's 50% off. And, and, and I think there's a lot to do with the mindset. I was like, okay, I'm ready to just get rid of it. But,
• 16:18
  the quality of what we have, the company that we have is so amazing that, like, why are you getting rid of it? So basically I sort of seen the sales coming in and my financial company is exploding. I'm working like a crazy person is doing great. And I'm like, okay, hold on a minute. What am I going to do now?
• 16:43
  And we, that month we sold out all of our inventory in two weeks in May. We have no inventory. Oh my gosh. Wow. So I look, I look at Adriana and say, hold on a minute, Adriana, we don't have employees anymore. We don't have agencies working with us. I am running the Facebook ads myself.
• 17:03
  I like a lot of it. I mean, I know a lot. I'm a CMO, so I know a lot of marketing and I manage a lot of it. But I always had agencies doing the work for me rather than me running those ads. And I know that's your expertise. But, you know, so the little things like how to do it, it's a little bit more challenging than overseeing everything.
• 17:26
  And for me, it was like, there's no way I'm giving away my child. Like, I don't care how much money I'm making with my financial company. I'm going to have to figure this out. And that's when I started bringing everybody back. So I was like, Audrey, we sold over, I think, $280,000 in May.
• 17:46
  And we didn't have inventory for half of the month. So basically, I think on the 12th, the 14th, we started doing pre-orders. So now you have to buy this jewelry and wait six to eight weeks to receive it. And people were buying it like nobody's business.
• 18:06
  And then we kept doing it. And then I brought everybody back. I brought my PR company. I brought my amazing digital marketing agency that just took over. I brought, you know, and then here I am again at $150,000 overhead. But at least now we can justify because we're selling and we're selling it before we actually plan.
• 18:27
  have the item, which is amazing. It's a good problem to have, right? It's a good problem to have. You really weathered the storm. Yeah, so now we're dealing with, you know, the facts that we're short on packaging and we have to produce all this jewelry we never thought that we would have to produce, like,
• 18:45
  so fast and we're dealing with growth issues. But yeah, so Joanne de Vivi is back. It happened over the coronavirus. And when people say, how did you do it in the middle of coronavirus? I'm like, I don't know. I think I just needed to go through this really hard time to kind of find myself after everything that I went through as a woman.
• 19:09
  somebody that gave away you know 50 of a multi-million dollar company because that's what I did I gave I gave away um basically 50 of my company that I built with my ex-husband for the right of having that jewelry line with him and then that was taken away from me so I had to I had to go over like getting really down
• 19:34
  to be able to rebuild myself and liberate myself and find a way to succeed and say, you know what? I don't need a man. I don't need anybody. I need my amazing employees. I need my amazing agencies. I need my amazing partners that will work with me to build and grow this brand. And that's where we are. And I'm just so happy to be able to talk about it because I never thought it was going to happen. It was like,
• 20:02
  this storm is never going to end. And it has, and it's clear outside. So it's amazing. I mean, I can see it on your face. You're absolutely radiating. I can see your happiness. And I'm so happy for you. I didn't realize all the ups and downs of that story. And it's certainly one that you've really come out on top. And I'm sure there were days where you didn't think that that would happen. Sounds, you know, like a really big thing.
• 20:32
  I want to talk to you about the company that you've used to help scale your business, Wayflyer. For anyone that's listening, Wayflyer is a company that funds businesses. They give loans, right? Is it loans? Yeah, they give it. It's more like advances. An advance. Yeah.
• 20:54
  Yeah. And they don't take any equity. They just take a percentage back. And you've basically been using this company to help scale your, your inventory, right? Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about, about what it's been like and how it's working? Yeah. They're amazing. These guys, they are, I mean, I can't even say good things enough about them. When,
• 21:20
  when I found myself in that situation where, okay, so now I have all these pre-sales, my whole website is at a 50% off. So that means that my margins are very little. I mean, it makes sense if you have a huge amount of sales, right? Because even though if you have a little margin, a small margin, you're still making money, but you have to have a huge amount of sales. And, you know, I came from a time where,
• 21:49
  We had a lot of debt when the money started coming in. So now I'm dealing with having to pay all of that. And now I have to buy all of this brand new inventory and all of it. So I found Wayflyer. And what they do is that they will basically buy, they will advance you money in exchange for a percentage of your future sales.
• 22:14
  Um, so I found them and they were able to basically find, give me the money for, for my inventory. And then that way I can buy a lot more inventory upfront. I can have the inventory I need in my business to be able to scale because otherwise I wouldn't be able to do that. And, you know, the more we sell, the more capital we're able to access. So it's being a key factor on us being able to scale at this point.
• 22:44
  And they're amazing that they're not a huge company, you know, like other companies like that out there. So there's a difference. I've had problems with companies doing exactly what they do before. That was very hard to deal with Shopify Capital, for example, because when I went through these transition projects,
• 23:02
  where I didn't have the product anymore for Joie de Viv and not Joie de Viv, for Viv Storms. And I had to change into Joie de Viv and we had no sales. We had a loan with Shopify Capital and they came after us saying that we violated the agreement. I'm like, how did I violate the agreement? And they said, well, you change your product. I said, I didn't change my product by choice. I changed my product because...
• 23:28
  The product was taken from me. I had to create a different product. So it's different than when you work with a company like Shopify Capital to be able to get this advance. And when you work with a company like Waveflyer, because you have a much more, you have a personal relationship with them. So it's much easier to manage that and then go from there. So it's been a pleasure working with them. They have been a key factor for us, for sure.
• 23:59
  Yeah, it sounds amazing. What was the criteria that they look for? Like, how do you know if you're eligible to receive something like that? Well, they will look into your sales. You know, we are on Shopify, so they will go into Shopify. They will see, and their technology is amazing. So they will see what revenue you have coming in. And then they will analyze how much you're spending in marketing and advertising.
• 24:25
  And then they literally have a dashboard, which all that information goes into. And they create like an analysis on how fast you're growing.
• 24:36
  And that's what they use to analyze how much capital they're going to make it available to you. And for example, we got an advance from them last month. And then we're growing so fast that they already gave us another advance. And then we'll use that for inventory as well. And the next month, if we show that growth keeps going, you know. So it's something that's amazing for smaller businesses because a lot of times, especially going into Q4, I know they were going to triple our sales in Q4.
• 25:06
  And how am I going to be able to, and I can't do pre-sales in Q4 because you're buying for Christmas, you need the products now. So how am I going to be able to buy all of that inventory upfront if I don't have the capital? So having these guys partner with our business is amazing because that's it, it's a partner.
• 25:23
  And they're not taking the equity. They're taking a small fee, which is manageable, you know, just for giving us that advance. And the only payments really that you're giving them is a percentage of your sales, which is like basically you're paying when the money is coming in rather than, OK, you have this big loan payment every month. So, yeah, I feel like it's a partnership that we have with them rather than, you know, somebody giving us a loan.
• 25:48
  Yeah, and it definitely feels like not enough people know about this because it just sounds so great. I'm wondering what kind of, and it doesn't mean you need to be specific about your numbers, but how much money can they loan you? Like, you know, glass ceiling kind of stuff.
• 26:04
  I think they do up to 500,000. Yeah. Wow. Really cool. Really amazing resource. I was so interested to learn about them. And I think it's something that more women need to hear about because I've especially had conversations with people who...
• 26:20
  you know, their biggest struggle is fulfilling like wholesale orders, for example, and the upfront capital that's needed to continually pump into businesses in fashion and, you know, whatever it might be. So it's really interesting. And how are you guys going now? What's happening at the moment with the business? Well, well, we're reworking everything. We ended our 50% offset.
• 26:48
  at that price. And also because our margins are so low and it's just not sustainable to be able to keep a business that we can't make enough jewelry and the price so low and we're not making enough to be able to grow the business. So we ended that, but we're as much as we can, we're launching sales to be able to make it more,
• 27:08
  affordable for our clients. And now we're working on being able to get everything back together. So we're creating amazing relationships with some of the biggest publications that are taking notice on Joa De Vivre right now, which is very, very exciting. Because when I decided to create a sustainable fine jewelry line, I wanted to make something
• 27:32
  out there. And for example, when you go into direct to consumer lines, similar to my line, you know, you're going to find 10 carry gold, 14 carry gold, but we only work with 18 carry gold. We wanted to make affordable luxury. And I think it's like that in Australia as well, right? You
• 27:50
  I don't think so. I'm not familiar with receiving or buying 14 carat. Brazil is like that too. Like I come from Brazil. I've never seen 14 carat or 10 carat gold in my life. And then, so when I started making jewelry, I was like, okay, I'm going to take that from my culture.
• 28:07
  Gold for me is 18. That's gold. Okay, because 24 is too soft to make gold. But so all of our jewelry is 18 carry gold. The experience that you get from buying your jewelry is very different than everything else that you can get out there. So we wanted to kind of put our team back together. Now that things are working and really get that into all the big publications and get most people that are demographic to take note on our product itself.
• 28:36
  So we're working on new collections. We're working on an amazing, amazing, amazing engagement ring collection that's only going to be done with sustainable lab-grown diamonds. And we are working on some new collections for our everyday line. And we're launching, we have a few new projects that are coming up. So our name and some photo shoots are going to be coming up in some big magazines
• 29:06
  I mean, Christmas is coming and I think that's going to be very different than last year. I hope so for you. I'm sure it's going to be amazing. I want to ask you, I didn't actually know that about gold and that it was like, you know, dirty mind gold, which sounds bad for me to not know that, but that's the truth. Most people don't. Where do you get recycled gold from? Well, in our case, our manufacturer...
• 29:34
  We get the option of buy what type of gold you want to buy. Of course, we pay more for recycled gold than, you know, like newly mined gold that we really don't know where it's coming. Recycled gold can be made in many different ways. It can be made from whenever you don't want your gold anymore, you sell it and then they will melt it and they will, you know, refine the gold. And it goes back to the perfect gold that you had, you know, when that jewelry was first made.
• 30:02
  A lot of people, a lot of times the refineries, they will get gold from, you know, electronics that have gold parts in it and all kinds of things. Basically, what we're trying to do is we're trying to not go into mines and mine gold. You know, we want to avoid newly mined gold because that's what destroys communities. And if you do a little bit of research into dirty gold, you know.
• 30:25
  It's incredible. And when I was making jewelry with Vivstorms, I had no idea about any of that. When I started learning about, and I felt so stupid, I was like, how can I be making jewelry and not know all of this? Like, if you go into a lot of direct-to-consumer brands, they're very, very, very affordable, and they have ethical, natural diamonds.
• 30:48
  First of all, the quality of the diamond is going to be usually at least SI. Our diamonds, the quality is at least, the very least VS. So it's like amazing quality, all premium qualities. The color is so much better than anything else that you can get out there. All of our diamonds are color, at least H and clary, at least VS. And the gold is all recycled.
• 31:15
  So basically, when I was researching all of that stuff, I was like, how was I making jewelry? And I had no idea about any of that. And that's when I started, like, the more I learned, the more I was like, okay, I need to figure out a way to make this affordable and sustainable and something women will be proud to wear, basically. Yeah.
• 31:44
  And that's that's the premises of Joie de Vivre. And there's something that a lot of people will say about, you know, oh, it's an ethical diamond because it's certified by, you know, the Kimberly process. And then I went to dig into the Kimberly process. The Kimberly process, basically, they will give a certification to batches of diamonds, but they have no way to track where the diamond was mined.
• 32:10
  They have no way to track who mines that diamond, how it was mined, what the working condition of those mines were at that time. They have no idea if it was a child that was mining it. Yeah. So basically, it's a very flawed process. Lack of transparency. Exactly. And then people are going to say, oh, we use ethical natural diamonds. Uh-huh.
• 32:33
  Can you trace it? Oh, no, we can't trace it. So it's not ethical. I can trace my diamonds. I can tell you who was the person that cut the diamonds, the person that made that diamond, which lab it was made and all of that, and the working conditions and all of that. And that's why I did not want to go into natural diamonds. Not natural because we can't call, you know, mines diamonds natural anymore. The FTC crashed it. Now we can use mines diamonds or lab-grown diamonds. That's it. They are both natural, basically.
• 33:01
  once created in the lab. It's such a big education piece because I feel so many people would be in that same boat of just not truly understanding the background of these don'ts. I mean, we've all watched, you know, Blood Diamond and we've all got a basic idea, but we don't really, it's not forefront of our minds at the moment, I think. So it's very interesting. I want to ask you what your advice is for women who have a big idea and want to start their own business.
• 33:32
  My advice is just do it and believe in yourself and don't let anybody tell you that you're crazy because people will tell you you're crazy. Trust me, I heard enough. People will tell you you're crazy. People are going to tell you that you can't do it or it's going to fail and it probably will fail.
• 33:55
  But you're going to overcome it just like I did, you know, and I truly believe that if you have an endeavor, if you have an idea, if you have something you're truly passionate about and you love. It has to fail for you to really understand the value of it.
• 34:17
  You know, you can be passionate about something, but if it's too easy, it's easy. At the end of the day, failure is a big part of success.