Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / How Sara Panton, Founder of Vitruvi, is building her business through sophisticated scent

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How Sara Panton, Founder of Vitruvi, is building her business through sophisticated scent · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Sarah Panton for Female Startup Club. Hi guys, welcome back to another episode of Female Startup Club. I'm your host, Joona Roisin, and joining me on the show today is Sarah Panton, founder of Vitruvi, a company that's changing the world through scent.
• 0:25
  They sell sophisticated essential oils and diffusers to scent your day-to-day. Sarah is sharing her journey of growing up in a rural town, going through med school, and making a change in her life that led her to launching this business with her brother and co-founder, Sean. We're covering the hustle from the early days when they were making everything by hand to becoming a 20-person team today, named as one of Fast Company's most innovative companies in 2019, and stocked in more than 300 stores.
• 0:54
  This is Sarah for Female Startup Club.
• 0:57
  Okay, let's get started. I'm really interested to start by talking about your life before you started Vitruvi. I know you have so many interesting sort of elements to your story. Yeah, I mean, life before Vitruvi, it's been such an important part of what was my 20s and now in my 30s. So life before it, I mean, Sean, my co-founder, and I grew up in a small farming community on Vancouver Island.
• 1:25
  And our parents were super early adopters of the organic movement. So we always grew up understanding the importance of natural before it was maybe trendy, you could say. And I always had an interest in learning about different places. We never traveled growing up, but I was fascinated with Jane Biddle and followed her and got every VHS Discovery Channel documentary. So I was always curious about people in different cultures and different parts of the world and loved being in nature. So that was life before it.
• 1:55
  Yeah. And I read that you went to medical school and then you went to Kenya, I think it was, on a bit of an adventure before you started the business. Yeah.
• 2:06
  Yeah, I went to just the university in my town and then because I was nervous to move to a bigger city. And I was studying neuropsychology and then I learned about this incredible program in global health. And it's like, this is everything I care about. I'm so curious about learning about different wellness practices from different cultures. And so the courses were in medical anthropology where you were learning about different places and practices and medicine.
• 2:32
  My profs were so cool because they lived in Sierra Leone and like Peru and all these places. And so I got there and switched programs and had read most of the reading list that was prescribed reading. So I'm like, this is where I'm supposed to be. And then from there, I went on to study preventative medicine. And my goal was to work in remote places and learn about different practices around health and well-being and,
• 2:57
  And then assist. And so when I went to Kenya, it was with an organization I was working with at the time and we were setting up safe birthing centers for women for the first time in the Masay Mara in Kenya.
• 3:07
  So that was my life before it. In full transparency, when I got to school, it didn't feel like my people. I'd worked for six years to get there and spent a ton of money in student loans. And it took about two years into the program for me to sort of check my ego at the door and really be real about the fact that, you know what, I've been telling myself the story since I was 17, but I don't know if this is really what I love doing. And so that was a really big wake up call for me.
• 3:36
  Yeah. Wow. It's easy to kind of get on a trajectory. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's a pretty big goal to basically say, yeah, I'm going to switch directions here and do something a bit different. What was the moment for you when you had that light bulb going off that said, hey, I want to start a business. I want to start a business with my brother. When did that happen? Yeah.
• 4:00
  There's never been a light bulb moment. It still surprises me. The company started as a blog. Do you remember Tumblr? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it started as a Tumblr account and I would steal books from the library at school. There was like this botanical encyclopedia by National Geographic. I actually still have it in my office. I took it.
• 4:24
  And I would like learn about all the different botanicals and different practices and then write blog content and put it up on Tumblr. And that's all it was. And then I started blending my own products with essential oils.
• 4:39
  had no understanding of business or plan to start a business. It was just a passion project. So that then just evolved. And I'd been working, like I said, with an organization. And part of that was managing corporate sponsorship. So for the first time in my life, I was around a business community. My parents were a teacher and a policeman.
• 5:00
  And there was no entrepreneurship in our family and no business. And so that's what kind of started getting my wheels turning. And I started to learn about the business world and how you could create something and work for yourself.
• 5:11
  And a lot of that independence is what drew me to be interested in practicing medicine, kind of being in charge of your own hours, having a team. Like I liked that idea of I like responsibility. And so I liked that responsibility. And so a lot of that is translated to the work that I do today. But yeah, to answer your question directly, there still hasn't been a light bulb moment. And we're seven, six years in.
• 5:38
  That's incredible. So it kind of, I guess, spiraled from you working on the blog, doing these things that you already loved, you're already really passionate about. Was there a moment when or a conversation when you thought, yeah, OK, we're going to invest some money to create some products that we go out to sell? And what was that kind of time like? Yeah.
• 5:57
  Yeah. So that was a very, very specific conversation and something that I will forever be grateful for. A mentor of mine who I had met through that charity, him and his then wife had a company and he was a really big, successful CEO. And I ended up kind of helping his wife's company with a few things and.
• 6:16
  I think he knew through passing in conversation that I wasn't happy at school. And he sent me a few questions and he is an extraordinary leader and has been referenced in different leadership books and sent me a list of six questions and took me to lunch and asked me the questions and wrote it out on a napkin. And he was about to do some business deals with a friend on the side and said, you know, do you want to?
• 6:39
  Maybe I thought maybe I could help with those and just learn like as an intern. And then he found out what Sean, my co-founder and brother were doing. And I'll never forget it. He took the stack of decks and pushed them to the side of the table and said, let's do that. And so this person took a huge risk on me. He's forever one of the most important people I've ever met in my life. And yeah, completely changed my life. That's incredible. Do you remember what the questions were that he asked you?
• 7:07
  Um, I have, I probably find it in an email if I go back far enough, but a lot of it was around, you know, what do you want your life to look like? What do you value? Um, what kind of scale do you want your life? What financially, how, what does success look like to you? Independence wise, what does success look like to you? And I just remember, I vaguely remember just like a graph of.
• 7:27
  that was where I was at and the path I was on and then a graph of what could be. So that was the conversation. So I think the learning from that is like, I always try to take time with people and be really curious and look at opportunities or that they might have to, to fulfill their potential. Yeah. I'm very, very interested in. I love that. And I love that kind of like,
• 7:52
  you know, provoking the thought and making someone sit down and actually think about this kind of thing, because sometimes you just cruise along and you're just coasting through and you haven't asked yourself those questions unless someone brings it to you. Yeah. Or you haven't re-asked yourself those questions, right? Like I think it's bizarre that we have to make all of these huge decisions in high school when there's so much going on.
• 8:15
  So to make sure that you're checking in with yourself and checking your ego and saying, you know, what, why am I doing this? Do I love it? Am I serving the world in the best way that I can? Yeah. Wow. So you have that conversation, you start working on this as a business. What kinds of things are you doing in those early days to get customers and how are you selling the product? Like what happened there?
• 8:40
  Yeah, I mean, pretty simple. We had really no money because we put it all into branding with an agency that I had met on a surf trip. We had built one of my favorite brands of all time. So that was a sign and very...
• 8:55
  Special circumstance. And then we put it into raw components and we couldn't afford to buy things prepackaged. So Sean and I would put roller balls in the rollers to make our roll-ons. And I still have like a little dent in my hand and we would watch Anthony Bourdain reruns and just like assemble the raw components at night. And then in the daytime, we would be like...
• 9:18
  finance and wholesale. But we had no budget for digital ads or any sort of like larger digital marketing. And so the basis of the company was based on wholesale. And I put together a list of 500 retailers and stores from mom and pop shops to like...
• 9:38
  Nordstrom's and my goal every day was to reach out to 50 of them either through email or call or LinkedIn. Wow. And I still have the spreadsheet is printed out and I highlight each one after I did it and it was just a numbers game. And I knew what our minimum order quantity was and like this is our minimum purchase order and they would pay and then we would ship it. And so that's.
• 10:01
  building a business on just like word of mouth, really working with a lot of our first stores were female founded companies. They were taking a big risk in taking on our product by paying for it. We were taking on a big risk by not knowing if they would be able to sell it. And so they also took the time to understand the company and what we were about and really what we cared about, which was creating natural home scenting products that help transform people's spaces.
• 10:27
  comfort in a way that is good for the planet and their families and the world.
• 10:32
  So that's how we started. That's incredible. I think I read that you emailed Nordstrom every three months for a year or something until you got on their shelves. I did. I fully, I harassed Nordstrom. Were you worried that you would annoy them or you were like, I'm just going to keep going? No, I mean, they had a lot of turnover. So I just would pretend that I had gotten further along with the person before their own.
• 11:01
  That's incredible. That's so cool. I love that. I knew that there's, you know, there's certain stamps of approval that you need to get while building a brand. And regardless of the volume they end up doing, Nordstrom ended up being a great partner for us. But I knew that that was one of those key components that we needed to nail, like a few key partners to have validity and to be bigger than we seemed.
• 11:22
  got to have that credibility behind you kind of thing before you can work your way into those doors. That's incredible. And I want to talk about raising capital. I know you guys just recently raised another 4.5 million, I think it was, in February, which is so exciting. Congratulations. Thank you. And that brought you to 7 million, I think, I read. What was that process like? It was horrible. Yeah.
• 11:51
  I mean, anyone that says it isn't is lying, in my opinion. It's really interesting. We ended up finding an incredible partner and two incredible partners. And raising capital, it's a great time to learn about your business. And it's a great time to just...
• 12:14
  basically hear everything that could be wrong with it and a really good time to grow confidence and a discerning amount of influence of other people's opinions. And, um,
• 12:28
  I think the biggest thing I would say if someone's actually raising capital is that it's people's job to seem interested. And those people that get on the phone and that email you, they just have a checklist, just like I did with my retail stores. And so it's just it's a really great practice to just like stay steady, not get too excited because everything can switch so much. Yeah.
• 12:51
  Yeah, it definitely made me interested in like how I can help maybe change that system or be a part of that system in the future in a way that I wish that it had existed for us. But, yeah, we ended up with two incredible partners. And so I'm grateful for that. Yeah. Sorry. I just lost my voice for a second there. No worries. And what does this most recent round of funding allow you to do in the business? Yeah.
• 13:18
  Really, the funding for that is like we were growing so fast and continue to grow really fast. And so there's certain levels of growth that you get to that you need some more fuel on the fire to reach the next the next kind of growth spurt. And a lot of that for us is product innovation.
• 13:36
  And so when you create a new product or you're really innovating, it takes capital and we have pretty ambitious growth goals. And so that's really what that is being used for. But we have and continue to run the business very responsibly and very more traditionally than you would say.
• 13:54
  maybe like an e-commerce, like digital brand that's raising a ton of capital. Like Sean and I are pretty old school in that. So we raised quite conservative numbers for a series A you would kind of consider. And that is how we maintain growing the business as well. And now when you're in this phase of, you know, bigger growth, faster growth, what are the kinds of things that are working for you? And how are you acquiring customers like at scale?
• 14:23
  A lot of the same tactics are even just how we started, but just larger. So a huge piece of what we do is through our affiliate programs. And that really just started with influencers, you know, not in the fancy YouTube setting, but just like influential women. We talk about our customer and our customer is someone who's a discoverer.
• 14:46
  amongst their friends. And there's someone that's curious and that they're looking for natural products that fit their aesthetic and the way they live. And so for us, our customer actually fits that mold of someone that's influential in their peer group or in their friend group or mom group. And so we were able to formalize that actually through one of our second hire who now directs all of our partnerships and customer experience team. And the program just organically grew. Yeah.
• 15:14
  And so that's a huge component of what we do, both from I think the term is like micro influencers. So people with like less than 10,000 followers to, you know, we've worked with some larger podcasts like Ashley Graham and Sophia Bush and larger media outlets there. But I think our affiliate influencer program is really, really exciting to me.
• 15:35
  Yeah, for sure. Especially getting to have like, you know, access to all these people who truly love your brand. It just must be such a fulfilling project within the company. Yeah. And I mean, they're so talented. It blows my mind, like the content that they create and we use it for shoots and we work with them to help launch products and get their insights. And so, yeah, we're, it's a really fun program. I love that.
• 16:02
  I want to talk about your connection with One Girl Can. I was reading about your partnership there. Can you tell our listeners what that is and, yeah, just a little bit about it? It's so amazing.
• 16:16
  Oh, yeah, thanks. So my background, like I kind of mentioned, was in work abroad. And it's something I'm really passionate about. Lottie Davis and her husband co-founded the company AG Hair Care, which is like quite a large salon brand. And they're actually based here in Vancouver, Canada. And she grew up in South Africa and started this incredible program, One Girl Can, that works throughout Uganda and Kenya.
• 16:42
  helping women go through kind of the final stages of high school and setting them up for university programs. And I witnessed firsthand just what education can do for women and what that does in communities, working and speaking with women in the Masaymarra.
• 16:57
  over tea on numerous occasions. And just the way that Lottie had set up that program really resonated with me. And so the program that I created and pitched Lottie was that for every woman employed at Vitruvi, Vitruvi would pay for the four-year university scholarship for a woman abroad. And that includes books, tuition, laptop, living expenses. And the only stipulation is that within the One Girl Camp program, the women need to be
• 17:26
  pursuing STEM. So like science, technology, engineering, math type careers, because there's an abundance of nurses and teachers in that region of the world. So it's pretty cool for me to look around the office and see all of these incredibly ambitious people in our office and women and knowing that there's a woman halfway around the world also pursuing her professional ambitions. So that's the program.
• 17:54
  Yeah. And I feel like it must make, you know, by having that DNA in your company, it must make your employees feel so connected to what you're doing and the bigger goal and the bigger mission there, which I just love. I think it's amazing. Yeah. Our teams are really cool.
• 18:10
  They're awesome. How many are you now? Just over 20. Yeah. So it's a small and mighty team. That was always mine and Sean's goal was to build sort of what felt like a design studio. And everyone wears lots of hats and we work really hard and in sprints, but it's a really tight knit group.
• 18:26
  That's really cool. Mm-hmm. And how is it working with your brother, being siblings, being business partners? What's the vibe? I love it. I mean, it's awesome. He's my only sibling, so it's kind of all I know. And like I said, we grew up in the middle of nowhere, so it was like we're either going to be friends or it's going to be super boring.
• 18:47
  childhood. But I think our ability to work through issues in a really transparent and compassionate way is a skill set that I obviously have been able to have with Sean, but I think has translated throughout my leadership, where just being able to speak straight, clearly, being compassionate and knowing that you love the person across the table and you're going to celebrate
• 19:11
  Christmas with them, maybe, or a family vacation. So it has allowed us, I think, to grow as quickly as we have. We're just people that don't like drama or politics. And so keeping those co-founder relationships really clean and simple is good. And Sean and I have really complementary skill sets. And he's just really great at what he does. So it makes it easy.
• 19:33
  Shout out to Sean. Yeah, shout out to Sean. Yeah. I want to ask you what your advice is for women who want to start a business and have a big idea. Oh, very good question. I think that.
• 19:50
  It would be to start slow and do it and know who you're surrounding yourself with. A piece of advice I've given before, it's like in those early days of creating something, you have to be really careful about who's influencing what's going on for you.
• 20:07
  And I talk about like kind of two circles of support. The first is the people that are around you, like your best friend, your girlfriend, your mom, that just like love you no matter what and think you're so brilliant and that you're going to take on the world and you can do anything, which is so true and so important. And then the second ring are people with industry specific experience.
• 20:29
  that have maybe gone through a few things and that they can provide very specific feedback or advice to you. And it's really important not to get those two circles crossed and that to know that in the beginning days, you just sort of need to have that incubation period where everything is possible.
• 20:47
  Because I truly believe you make your own life. And then as you get further out, you have to be very specific about whose advice you take, because it is alarming how much people like to say that they know how to do something or take a very ambiguous piece of experience and apply it to what you're creating, which can get people fuzzy. So just, yeah, just keeping things really simple and being aware of whose advice you're taking and at what stage is, I think, really important.
• 21:16
  And how do you think you would like separate the good from the bad or the good from the not so good? Yeah. So like looking at someone's background, for me, I had a ton of advice given to me early on from a range of people from technology to food, like all these different industries. And just having a mindset of saying, OK, this person built this business in this year, in this industry, with this consumer.
• 21:46
  What can I take from that that could apply to my business as opposed to sort of broad strokes like, oh, well, that happened to them. So I should do this. And that's where I think people get fuzzy and it decreases confidence and waters down the end result. And it's more so even more important when you're raising capital because you basically just get on 10 phone calls a day with someone telling you what you could do better.
• 22:15
  Or a genius idea that they have for you. Yeah, of course. Everyone's got the ideas. Yeah, totally. So we're up to the six quick questions part of the interview. Ready to go? I think I am. Question number one is what's your why? My why is creating safe spaces at home that make people feel inspired and cozy and in control of their environment.
• 22:44
  Question number two is what's the number one marketing moment that made your business pop? I think designing the amenities for Air Canada. We designed the amenities for Air Canada four years ago, five years ago, when we didn't even know if the company was going to survive. And they're still in every flight today, every bathroom, every amenities overnight trip.
• 23:10
  So I got a lot of airplane bathroom selfies sent to me. That is so cool. Do you see like a direct, um, is there a way to see a direct result to see if those people buy for you? Not a way to see a direct result, but the little message, our customer experience team and yeah, I get a lot of notes about it. That's so cool. Um, question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? Uh, at the beach.
• 23:34
  Oh, okay. Nice. Yeah. Water. Yeah. Water. I live close to the beach in Kitsilano in Vancouver and then spend a lot of time in Tofina. Nice. Question number four is how do you win the day? I think I win the day by being present for people and listening actively and taking time to move my body and to connect with my breath.
• 24:01
  Nice. Yeah, breathwork's a big one. I get a lot of women who talk about the different techniques that they've used over the years. It's really interesting. Question number five is, if you only had $1,000 left in your business bank account, where would you spend it? On our team.
• 24:20
  Nice. Probably. I love that. And question number six is how do you deal with failure? And that can be around a personal experience or just your general mindset and approach. I think I normalize failure because it's inevitable. And so failure is just a stumbling of in the pursuit of something and I welcome it. I move through it and then I get over it.
• 24:49
  Yep. Amazing. Oh, and I had one more question. What's your favorite scent? Ooh, yeah.
• 24:57
  It's like choosing your favorite child. My favorite combination is cedarwood and bergamot. So like 10 drops of each in a diffuser. And then one of my favorite aromas that we've ever made is grove, which smells like cathedral grove, where my grandparents used to take me. And it's the same trees that are in the grove. And it just makes it smell like nature in your living room.
• 25:21
  Oh, my gosh. I use that in my office. How beautiful. That's so special. You know that mix that you just said, when would you use that mix? Is that like a morning or an evening? Cedarwood and bergamot. It's more evening, like super grounding and really kind of –
• 25:39
  Yeah, it's fresh from the bergamot, but like bergamot's in earl grey tea. So it's like very cozy. And then the cedarwood is our cedarwood's really beautiful. And then I've been using frankincense oil just if you drop some of the palm of my hand. And I smell it during my meditation practice and it's any time I need a quick breath. So I love that. I'm going to give it a try. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. I loved it. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it.
• 26:10
  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.
• 26:34
  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.
• 26:57
  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.
• 27:13
  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.
• 27:38
  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.
• 28:00
  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.