Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / GEMS: Selling Out in 72 Hrs with Omsom co-founder Vanessa Pham

Transcript

GEMS: Selling Out in 72 Hrs with Omsom co-founder Vanessa Pham · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:08
  I read that you sold out in 72 hours. So I'd love to know like what you attribute that success to and what your launch, like what went really well in your launch that was able to drive that kind of, you know, crazy results. And was there anything that didn't go so well that you would say, just scrap that, you know, didn't need to do it? Yeah. Oh my gosh. So I would attribute that.
• 0:36
  the kind of traction that we saw super early and then kind of, you know, since then we've sold out seven more times, which has been wild, but. Oh my God, that's amazing. Yeah. I mean, obviously, you know, that's on the supply chain side, we've been like, ah, trying to figure that out. And we have been able to scale that up in due time. But I would say the biggest thing I would attribute that to is.
• 0:58
  Our ability to cut through the noise as a brand, which we're very grateful for, which goes back to us really knowing who we are, what we're here to do and who we're speaking to. Being super clear on that has allowed us to speak consistently.
• 1:15
  to the right people, like the right audience, and from a place of really genuine care around our mission and values that people can feel. And what that's allowed us to do then is to build a community and then at the same time have, you know, media outlets understand, you know, oh, wow, like, look at that real resonance that brand is having. I want to speak about that.
• 1:37
  You know, what they don't see is like, oh, look at those founders who saw a white space in the market and are capitalizing on an opportunity. Like what they're seeing is soul and heart and real care about a mission. And so they want to write about that. And so right out of the gate, we got a ton of national press that kind of allowed Amson to break through and really speak to people and resonate with them emotionally. I love that. That's amazing. Oh, so cool.
• 2:05
  What's working for you now when it comes to marketing, when it comes to both, you know, organic and paid and all the things, what's kind of your focus when you're allocating budget? Yeah. So, you know, to date, our growth has been largely organic, like 90% organic. So we spent very little on paid. And, you know, that's something we would, in general, we would like to build out more of a performance marketing engine.
• 2:34
  But intentionally, that was not a focus of ours in our first year. We really, like I said, we want to build a brand that stands the test of time. And so we're constantly thinking about in the first year, how do you lay the groundwork for a brand in service of long-term value creation? And so, yeah, we really focused on investing in...
• 2:57
  Content. So my sister and my co-founder, she's really the heart and soul of AumSum in many ways. She is the one developing, you know, a lot of our content. And we take a really thoughtful and editorial approach to content. That's a huge investment of ours, just in terms of like her bandwidth and time.
• 3:17
  And which, you know, as a co-founder, that's a huge investment. And then beyond that, we're investing in building community. Like those are the biggest things. And then at the same time, we're like starting to test and learn on the performance side of things. But really, for the first year, we've been super focused on organic marketing through community brand building and content.
• 3:38
  When you say you've been focused on, you know, building the brand and specifically the community, what does that actually mean? Like, how are you actually building the community? Yeah, so a lot of it is just being unapologetically ourselves on the various platforms that we exist on. So, for example, on Instagram, Instagram.
• 4:00
  You know, our team dedicates a lot of time to creating original content to educate around the multitudes within Asian America, to create a space for dialogues that are potentially controversial or potentially, you know, hot takes. Let's, you know, let's call them that. We end with our dialogue.
• 4:20
  The reason that those are really big investments is because, one, we have to do a ton of research and diligence around putting those perspectives out in the world. We don't want to be misinformed. And then also we put so much emotional labor into them because our community holds us to such a high standard. Like we really want to make sure that we're actually doing right by them.
• 4:40
  So it's like doing the research. It's getting six people's perspectives across the team, getting their eyes on it, having, you know, behind the scenes, having dialogues and debates on like, is this aligned with who we are? Is this really the perspective we want to put out into the world? Whereas most brands would never even try. They're just like, okay, let's put another UTC up. Let's just put another product photo up. And like, that's our next post. Some of these posts takes us hours or like weeks of research to get to. Yeah.
• 5:08
  And so, yeah, that's kind of like some of a peek into what that process looks like for us. Yeah. And I really feel that, especially in some of the videos I was watching on your TikTok that are quite like informative and educational and super interesting. And yeah, I was like, wow, this is this is pretty intense. Like, this is cool.
• 5:33
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• 5:57
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• 6:20
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