Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / GEMS: Protecting Your Brand with Bug Bite Thing founder Kelley Higney

Transcript

GEMS: Protecting Your Brand with Bug Bite Thing founder Kelley Higney · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:09
  I was reading something about you. It was in an interview I read online that you have a brand protection program. Can you talk about what that is and why it's important?
• 0:19
  Sure. And again, every company runs differently, but for us, it was critical. It was imperative. So because I'm not the inventor of the product and it's been circulating around the product, you know, it can be replicated. So it came down to really building a strong brand for us and offering a quality product.
• 0:40
  with quality materials, eco-friendly. I wanted to put out a really good product. And my concern was because of the price point, we would get knocked off. We would get blown out of the water before we had a chance. So I kept the product out of distribution for the first three years. And I did that on purpose. I didn't sell to small mom pop shops. I didn't sell through distribution. I sold on my dot-com and I focused on my Amazon business
• 1:06
  And we worked on getting ourselves into Amazon programs wherein there's a lot of programs that Amazon offers to brands that maybe have counterfeit issues or that we need to protect their IP. There's transparency programs where you can put unique 3D barcodes on the back of your product. So when you do go into distribution, you can figure out where your product's going. So I wanted to get all of that set up.
• 1:30
  the infrastructure portion first before we really released it and launched it. This is the first year now that we're, three years into it, our brand enforcement program that we're gonna be selling to retail on a big level. We'll be in over 25,000 locations this year at retail. Yeah, I know. Oh my God.
• 1:48
  I know. And we're going to be launching in 25 countries this year. So I'm super excited. Holy moly. Yeah. What the heck? That's crazy. I know. I'm hoping we pop up out of the middle of nowhere. So...
• 2:03
  People are going to be like, oh, overnight success. And you're going to be like, it took me a few years to get here. It took four years of nonstop work. No, that's my biggest struggle. I didn't, you know, it becomes, you have to, I have to stop myself. I get really, really wrapped into my work because there's so much that needs to be done still. And I have to constantly be reminded by my mom, you know, who's a business owner for 30 years,
• 2:27
  who's also an entrepreneur, who also has the same brain as me, it's not, you can space it out. You know, every year we introduce something new and that keeps our brand relevant. You don't grow too quick because then we can't figure out where the, you know, the issues come in. So we're, even though we're growing quickly, we're, we're doing it steady and thought out. Considered.
• 2:50
  Have you had any issues with the brand protection program or, you know, in terms of people ripping off your product, that kind of thing? Not since we've been able to get into these programs. Again, their brand enforcement look into all the programs, especially with your Amazon business and also who you're going to be selling to. So like for us, we kept, like I said, we kept it out of distribution. We still, now that we're opening it back up to a,
• 3:17
  you know, some wholesalers and smaller businesses and mom pops, we know we'll be able to tell if they're breaking any of our policies, you know, if they're breaking our map policy, which, you know, they're selling under for the, you know, advertised price that we're allowing. If they're posting it on, we don't allow any of our wholesalers to sell on third-party websites like Amazon or eBay.
• 3:39
  But again, we'll be able to enforce those by ordering in a product and being able to see our unique barcodes and other ways of measuring that who ordered it and who's violating our policies. Okay, got it. So interesting. I love that. I've never spoken about that on the show before.
• 3:56
  Yeah, I think it's important. I think it's important. I'm sorry, I say that, but every brand should really, when they're, if you're a new business and you have a really good product and you need to protect it before you just open it up and get excited to sell to everybody, if there's a demand,
• 4:13
  Do it smart. Take a step back and vet. You know, we make sure all of our retail partners, even the small mom pops now, they have to have a brick and mortar location. They have to have they have to understand our our business model. They have to follow our brand guidelines. There's there's procedures. Yeah.
• 4:30
  We were not quick to just sell it to anybody that wanted it because I knew from experience, from my husband's previous positions, my mother's previous positions, I knew that the second you open it up without a good brand enforcement program, your pricing gets destroyed, your product quality gets destroyed. It can end up in places in liquidation sites, pallets, and now you destroy the integrity of your pricing before you even have a shot.
• 4:55
  And retailers don't like that. Other big online wholesalers don't like that. So creating a strong brand enforcement program is really wise. Really key, it sounds like, for sure. Yeah.
• 5:10
  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.
• 5:35
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• 5:58
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