Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Best of '22 - How to build a 7-figure clean fragrance brand with founder Rosie Jane Johnston (part 1)

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Best of '22 - How to build a 7-figure clean fragrance brand with founder Rosie Jane Johnston (part 1) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  Hi, it's just me popping in with a quick message to wish you and your loved ones a beautiful break this festive season. I hope you're able to take some time for yourself to recharge and reset and come back full of energy in 2023.
• 0:15
  Over the next few weeks, our team will all be taking a much-needed break, and you'll be hearing the best episodes from 2022. When I look back over this year, there were just so many amazing episodes. It was near impossible to choose just one handful, but we did, and they're amazing, and I'm sure you're going to love them.
• 0:34
  For now, I'm off to spend some quality time with my mom and my family in Queensland after three whole years of not seeing her. Can you believe it? Three years. Oh my gosh. I'm going to be doing all the little things that are good for my soul over this period and dreaming up my goals for 2023, which you're going to hear about when I come back in January. I'm so looking forward to reconnecting with you in the new year and bringing you more of the good stuff with Female Startup Club.
• 1:04
  This is Rosie Jane Johnston for Female Startup Club. Hey everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today we're learning from Rosie Jane Johnston, the founder of By Rosie Jane.
• 1:25
  By Rosie Jane was founded in 2010 by celebrity makeup artist Rosie Jane Johnston, an Aussie who has made her home in LA. Each fragrance formulated by Rosie herself is free of parabens, sulfates, phylates, and phosphates, and housed in recycled and recyclable packaging. Her perfumes and body care products are refreshingly simple and ideal for daily wear using the highest quality fragrance oils.
• 1:53
  In this episode, we cover her journey to building this brand into a seven-figure company stocked in the likes of Sephora and 13 Loon, and the campaign that's driving her customer acquisition right now. If you love something in this episode, please do consider sharing it on Instagram stories and tagging us or leaving us a review to help other ears find us. I'm so grateful for each and every one of you who do this.
• 2:20
  Let's jump into this episode. This is Rosie for Female Startup Club. Rosie, hi. Welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Yay. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
• 2:33
  I'm so excited to have you here and to hear all about your brand. I was just saying to you before we started recording that this is probably one of the first times we've had a fragrance founder on the show, and I'm so excited to dig into how you actually go about creating a fragrance brand and what that journey looks like. But before we jump into it, could you give us a bit of an overview or an elevator pitch, if you will, into you, your brand, and the ethos behind it?
• 3:03
  Yes. So I am Rosie Jane. I am the founder of By Rosie Jane. We are a clean beauty fragrance. I like to say lifestyle brand as well, because I feel like that's really what we stand behind. We are all about easy, everyday, transparent, authentic, beautiful products. That's kind of everything that stands for By Rosie Jane. I love it.
• 3:31
  And it's so beautiful. I love your design and your overall aesthetic. It's really nice. I know that you have had quite the journey to getting to where you are today and you've launched multiple brands under kind of your namesake brand. And I'd like to kind of go back to the very beginning of where you like to start your story and where you like to kick things off, which...
• 3:53
  I'm guessing is like pre-2002. Oh, man. I feel like I'm like a dinosaur in the entrepreneurial world nowadays, especially now the way that brands are built and they grow really, really fast and then they sell and then, you know, we're like an older brand in the sense that I launched. So my original product, I'm a makeup artist by trade. That's sort of my...
• 4:21
  where I started everything. It's where I fell in love with beauty. It's where I fell in love with the way that products can make you feel. But then in, gosh, I'm going to say like, yeah, it would have been like around 2002, 2002.
• 4:36
  2003, I launched this cheek and lip gloss and it was the very first product that I ever did. Clearly, I was a makeup artist. I had been putting lip gloss on the cheeks of my clients for what felt like an eternity because I love the like dewyness that is now very on trend, right? Everyone has, but I didn't know.
• 4:55
  very Glossier, but I didn't want the shimmer, which is what I did, like that kind of buildup that it would give on the skin. I love the translucent feel that lip glossied. So I created a cheek and lip pot and people were like, I'm sorry, I,
• 5:10
  really understand what you mean. It's like a cream, but it's sort of dewy. Now people would be like, yeah, dude, this is a no brainer. Of course. I love things that are two for one. Yeah. They're like, I'm sorry. I feel like this product's been done 10,000 times. But when I launched it, you're ahead of your time.
• 5:25
  People were really kind of, you know, taken back by it. It was different. But that's really where I started my whole entrepreneurial journey. We got this really amazing cult following behind it. We were just Rosie Jane was my name, the brand name then. And, yeah, I was still doing makeup and I was selling this little cheek and lip pot into boutiques. And that is really how it all began. I kind of got the bug then. And so what happened with it? Yeah.
• 5:55
  So we launched into, we were in a bunch of stores in Sydney. So I was still living in Australia at the time. And then, gosh, I'm trying to remember, I came to the US and we started to get like a little bit of like a following here. We launched into a very trendy store at the time called Sateen.
• 6:13
  which was on Third Street, which is a very kind of funky part of town. A friend of mine was a stylist and she was the buyer and she was like, I'm obsessed with your cheek and lip pots and I want to put them in there. So I found these little tiny stores and then kept kind of growing from there, all the time doing makeup and then...
• 6:36
  It really was this very organic growth. But then the crash of 2008 came, right? So I was never fully supporting myself doing the cheek and the lip. It was more makeup. I was doing both of them together. And then so I think we probably had about like 100 little tiny boutiques
• 6:59
  You know, and I would call. The orders were so teeny. So we would call and be like, or we. I would call like every day around the stores and be like, hi, you know, I have a new product. Would you like to try it? I would love to, you know, send you a sample. And they would say yes. And then I would send it and they would order like five. We had three colors. They would do like three of each color maybe. Yeah.
• 7:22
  And a tester. And then I would call them kind of monthly to be like, hey, you know, do you need a reorder? Do you need new testers? Can you do this? Can you do that? But, you know, I had no real idea of marketing. I had no idea of, you know, education. So we had this new product, a new concept and people were loved it. And we got excited.
• 7:42
  Literally, we got so much press. We were written up in a lore. We were written up in in style. And it was me literally packing these little boxes and tying hand-tied bows around each box. Very bootstrapped grassroots. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
• 7:58
  I mean, when we very first launched, I remember we had this, like, tying party. So I invited all of my friends to come over to our house in Paddington, where I grew up in Sydney. And there was, like, ten of us, and we all sat around a table and hand-tied. Yeah.
• 8:15
  Founders, take note. Get your friends over, rope them in. Yes. I had to supply a lot of wine, I remember, and food, and that was about it. That's all it took. It's all we need. It's all we need. And good conversation. And then we tied, you know, we probably didn't actually get very many done, but my mom was a bit of a champion at the tying of the bows. They were so perfect.
• 8:38
  But it really was a very kind of side hustle thing. It didn't, like I knew I wanted to do something that was different and made a difference and felt good, but I don't think I was picturing too far down the track. It was just everything was just right now. Oh, and you saw here, and you saw there. Yeah.
• 9:00
  And then we, yeah, it was kind of crazy. My thought process here around 2008 or my assumption is similar to COVID. This thing happens. Everything goes to kaput and all the stores that you're stocked in close.
• 9:18
  Is that what happened? Yes. Yeah. So, and at the time though, of course, we didn't have these online channels, right? So essentially when it closed, we lost probably...
• 9:32
  six or 80% of our stores. So the difference was is that there were still people who could fight through, whereas I feel like with COVID, with the brick and mortar, there was no, you know, no one could survive that period if you only had brick and mortar. It was mandatory closing. This was kind of survival of the fittest, right? It was brutal. But everyone, you know,
• 9:55
  was closing doors. That was our only outlet. We did not have a website. We didn't have anything at the time. And it seems so crazy. So yeah, it pretty much killed 85% of my business. And I remember at the time thinking, oh, okay, well, that's done. I mean, thank God for makeup. You know, I guess this is what it is. And then randomly, this girlfriend of mine
• 10:23
  who was a colleague who also had a beauty line at the time, was like, have you ever thought of doing fragrance? And this is still 2008 or is this kind of like a few years down the track?
• 10:33
  Well, it was... Establishing a timeline over here. Yeah, it was 2008 when it came up in conversation. Okay, right. And I was like, no. Like, why would... And this is where it was sort of this weird synchronicity is I had had a fragrance that I had mixed for myself as a makeup artist and...
• 10:58
  wore as like my signature calling card right so I had always had this kind of and but when she was like that I was like no dude why I would never do perfume like I am not a perfumer that seems insane and that kind of started everything rolling for me she planted the seed yeah and then when I
• 11:21
  You know, people were sort of the education behind what I had done with the cheek and lip just was challenging. It was, you know, beautifully packaged. I had done all of this really great work, but I didn't understand, as I said, the marketing. I didn't understand the...
• 11:36
  the full idea of selling this product out into the market. I think that that's what it was. Even though we had great press, we had great, you know, I was competing also at a time where the idea of an indie cosmetic line was like, I'm sorry, what are you talking about? Different world, free social media.
• 11:56
  Pre-social media, you know, it wasn't really taken seriously. It was sort of taken like I was, you know, mixing the product in my kitchen and pouring these little pots where, you know, we worked with a manufacturer. We did all of these things. It was small and teeny, but it was legitimate and it just wasn't...
• 12:18
  sustaining in the way that I would have needed to create this big wine. So, yeah, so that sort of, it was crazy. That, in order for that to happen, kind of pushed me into the world of fragrance.
• 12:29
  That's so crazy. I'm interested to know how you kind of wrapped that up and then got into 2.0 by Rosie Jane and actually got started. Are you sitting there being like, oh, I'm going to mix some fragrance in my kitchen today and see what happens? Or are you going straight out to a manufacturer who is a perfumer? What's that transition? How do you get from A to B?
• 12:55
  I had, so I had this fragrance that I had worn for a long time and people, clients of mine would ask me, oh, it's beautiful. I love it. Can you mix it for me? And then
• 13:06
  I think where, you know, from Lucy was her name who planted the seed kind of for me. Shout out to Lucy. Shout out to Lucy. And then for it to actually become like a real idea, it took another friend of mine being like, will you make the fragrance that you wear for me, make me like five little bottles. She had a boutique on...
• 13:29
  a very kind of funky area in LA called Larchmont Boulevard. And she was like, I'm obsessed with this fragrance. Can you make it for me? And I want to stick it and put it in my shop over the holidays. And I was like, sure. So I've made six little bottles and I had this old typewriter that I bought from a garage sale and I hand typed, you know, the fragrance. And that's, I had to name it. Love it. Very La Labo.
• 13:54
  Right? I literally, it looked exactly like La Labo. And I had to name it at the time. Of course, I had had my daughter, Layla. So originally it was called Layla. That's all. It was not Layla Lou. So I typed Layla. And then I was like, it would look weird to say Layla Rosie Jane. So I was like Layla by Rosie Jane. That's it. That was it. We glued it onto the bottle and
• 14:21
  Cut it out and gave her the bottles and she sold out in like a week. I was like, can I have more? And I was like, yeah, all right. And so I already, having had the cheek and lip, I already understood the process of how to kind of get into stores and do all that. And then I was like, you know what? And I was still doing the cheek and lip on the side. It was still going. It was just much smaller. And then I was like, you know what?
• 14:48
  I'm going to do this for, I'm going to add it to the line. I'm going to call all the existing stores that we have, tell them we're doing a fragrance. I'm not going to hand type these labels. I'm going to print some stickers. And, but at the time I went to a friend of mine, this is so crazy. And I was like, I don't have any money to do the packaging. So I can't afford to do a box. You know, the bottle's fine. I can get stickers, but you know, to do the box and kind
• 15:18
  No joke, like $2,000. And I'll give you, this is where the universe is so brilliant, and I was like, I'll give you like 20% of the company if you give me two grand to do the boxing. Whoa. Best deal ever for her. He said no. No. He said no. It was a guy. He was like, you know, can I do this? This is where it's so crazy when you're young and you're broke.
• 15:49
  I just, I don't know if the company, you know, if I trust you, you know, and I think that you're smart. I think you're all those things. But honestly, it was something like, I think your husband borrowed like 500 bucks from me like a year ago. And he never paid me back. So, you know, I don't think my wife is going to let me give you any more money.
• 16:07
  Oh, thank God. Thank God. Oh, my God. It's literally one of those moments where I'm... That would have been the best deal ever for him. Oh, my... We joke about it now. We're still friends with these people. And I'm always like... He's like, damn it. I'm like, thank God you had no foresight and no trust.
• 16:26
  Thank God. Because literally I was just like, you know, I just can't do it. So what did you do? How did you get the $2,000? I did no packaging. I just did the bottle and I just did the sticker and I had this little paper hang tag and we did no boxing and it was just the bottles and they would sit. And I was like, you know what? This is actually probably a really like more of an eco-friendly way anyway to do it.
• 16:54
  A hundred percent. That's so cool. My goodness. So you launched this new fragrance line. Well, you launch a very small fragrance offering of the one scent that you have. What is that first year like? Obviously you said in the first kind of go of 1.0, you know, the cheek and lip gloss, you didn't know how to market. You weren't sure like how to kind of, of the vision, et cetera.
• 17:20
  What changes in 2.0? How do you start actually getting this out there to, I mean, you're in a hundred stores before. That's kind of crazy to me. A hundred stores, a lot of stores. So how do you grow this and kind of nurture it into something a lot bigger?
• 17:36
  Again, I think for me it was a kind of organic growth. So I think we had probably like 40 stores left at that time where I was like, hey, we have a new fragrance. I'll send you a sample. Luckily, this fragrance, Le La Lou, is intoxicating, right? You know, it literally is like one of those –
• 17:55
  If I had a plan to make a fragrance as popular as Le La Lou, I don't think I could have accomplished it. It was just one of those sweet kind of moments that it just came together. And I happened to mix a fragrance that people loved. So that fragrance sold itself. I would send it to people and they'd be like, I love it. Great. I'm taking 10 bottles. And it would sell out. And then so it was amazing.
• 18:20
  having gone from a product where people were like, oh, I don't think they understand or, you know, it felt sticky when they first put it on or blah, blah, blah, blah, to a product that pretty much just sold itself with no real explanation. Product market fit. I think that's what they call it now. Yeah. And we weren't doing eau de parfum because they didn't understand how the alcohol thing worked. So I was just doing pure oil. But it really was this kind of...
• 18:48
  just crazy experience. And then I, you know, I am probably, I'm very tenacious and I worked the shit out of that product and my sales channels. I rang, like, and I'm talking like I would ring like 150 stores a day. Hey, I have a new product. I want to send you samples. I want to send you
• 19:18
  brands that I loved that I knew were sort of boutique-y and not perfume brands, but more like clothing brands, T-shirt brands. At the time, it was like Splendid or Ella Moss or whatever. And I would find out all the stores that they were sold in and I would call those stores. That's how I would find them. And so I would just ring and be like, I know that this is kind of the store, this is the sort of fashion that I would wear.
• 19:45
  Obviously, I made the fragrance, so it probably is going to resonate with people who also shop there. And that's how I continue to grow and grow and grow that way. And then we had great sell-through. So the product sold itself, but, you know, I was just diehard to get it into these stores.
• 20:02
  Did you need to invest any capital in those early years to develop the product that you were sending to these stores? And how were you thinking about working capital and the money piece of the puzzle?
• 20:16
  So for when I became Buy Rosie Jane, no capital, obviously, because I couldn't even get $2,000. When I started my original company, I borrowed money from my dad. So, or asked him for money. I mean, you say borrow with your parents. I never really paid him back. I never did. How much are we talking? I started with $10,000 and then incrementally probably went up to like $50,000.
• 20:44
  And that is because I think what happened, the difference between the two was with the cheek and lip gloss, I really, there had to be like someone filling and pouring this product for me. It wasn't something that I could do at home. I designed and created packaging for it. I sort of had like a marketing plan. I wanted a publicist to help me launch it. So there was some initial things that,
• 21:14
  that I started with for that company that I didn't with the second company, which was kind of crazy. So, but it was more sort of dollops, right? So I would do like, gave me $10,000 was like the biggest lump sum and then the rest I feel like just sort of trickled in. Like I was like, no, hey, can you help me pay my publicist this month? Can you buy me a computer? Can I get that as a business? You know, it was sort of more like that as opposed to here's my business plan, here's, you know, what?
• 21:43
  money and run. Got it, got it, got it. It was different. I did letterhead for Christ's sake. I printed like, you know, you had to have, you know, you just didn't print stuff like that from the computer. It was so...
• 22:01
  crazy when I did the cheek and lip in like 2002 or whatever it was. It was, you know, you had MySpace was how I was talking about. And I think my like 11-year-old sister at the time set up MySpace for
• 22:17
  Oh, my God. Wow, MySpace. We're really going back a while here. MySpace, Tom. Gosh. It was such a different time and the elements that you needed to start a business were completely different to what they are now. So, yeah. So, yeah, that was my start-up capital. Shout-out to your dad. Always. Funding the business. Love that for you.
• 22:39
  So now, I mean, you're stocked in the likes of Sephora, you're stocked in the likes of Mecca, you're stocked in all these amazing companies, you know, you're doing all these things. When it's come to your marketing and to getting to this point, if you were to distill kind of a couple of your major milestones, whether they were good or bad, but over the years, getting from, you know, those early years of you
• 23:00
  making 150 phone calls every single day and just like pounding the pavement to today. What's been that journey in the kind of like dot point summary? Oh, gosh. You know, so I think that the big jumps for me came with retail partnerships, right? So the people that I ended up getting recognition from, whether that be press or whatever. But for me, the jump from being just like...
• 23:29
  like little Rosie Jane in a couple boutiques was, you know, Henry Bendel's, which is not the same as it was. So we did it. It was a huge, if you could get a trunk show at Henry Bendel, it was like a game changer for your brand.
• 23:45
  And I got one. And it was because, again, I would ring them. Like I would stay up until 3 o'clock in the morning in Australia and call Henry Bendale's The Buyer over and over because they never pick up their phone. And I knew that if I left a message, they would never call me back because they'd be like, who the fuck is Buy Rosie Jane, right? So I would just call and then if I got the voice message, I would hang up and then I would try like maybe an hour later,
• 24:15
  Thank you.
• 24:15
  You know, and until I got and then she picked up the phone and I was like, oh, hi, I'm really good. You know, I would love to do it. And, you know, I was calling from Sydney and she's like, great, well, you know, I'd love to meet you and get samples. Are you going to be in New York? And I was like, yes, I am. I'm going to be in New York. You know, I'll try and plan it. And then I would be like, and then I would just set up all these meetings while I was there and I would do it. I did it with Barney's. I did it with Henry Vendell's. And Henry Vendell was like, you know what, we'll give you a shot.
• 24:45
  And what was the impact of that? You know, I think what it had is it wasn't massive for sales, but what it did is let other people in the industry sort of, because they're always shopping Henry Bendel's, right? So they were kind of coming in to be like, what's new? What's cool? I mean, they were at the time...
• 25:06
  The place to be discovered as a brand. It was like if Henry Bendel took you, people were like, oh, shit, this is like legitimate, like this is going to be the next big thing. So when I got that trunk show, it was huge. That was sort of our jump.
• 25:23
  Although financially, can I tell you, it didn't ever feel like amazing at any particular point where I was like, whew, now I'm, you know, I'm in, I'm in, you know, financial freedom ever with the brand. Was there a point where you're able, or what point rather, were you able to start paying yourself a salary and kind of take money out of the business?
• 25:48
  I only stopped doing makeup, I've been a makeup artist this whole time, in 2018.
• 25:55
  So we launched into Sephora in 2018 and that is when that was, you know, obviously a huge game changer again for us. And that is when I was like, okay, you know what? I have to stop doing makeup, you know, leave my clients and go all in. Even though I was all in for, you know, much way before 2018, I was like, I don't know
• 26:19
  I never felt like I had the confidence to just give up that income. And then in 2018, I was like, I just have to. It's not fair to the clients that I'm working for because I was there, like, doing their makeup and I was, like, looking at my phone like, I'm sorry, I have to go. I have a meeting. I'm so sorry. I have to do this, you know. And I was, you know, Sephora is such an incredible company to work with. But they ask a lot. It's a lot of time, a lot of energy and, you know,
• 26:47
  I'm growing a brand, you know, on a scale that I had just never done before. So I had to give my all in to everything. Do you have any tips for founders who are listening who, you know, are dreaming of getting into Sephora? What do you think was working in your favor and got you in the door?
• 27:08
  Innovation, that's the biggest thing. You know, we got into Sephora primarily because finally clean,
• 27:20
  products, right, became a thing. And so we had been clean and non-toxic since the beginning, really. Well, I had mixed and it was not, right, and that sort of opened up this can of worms for me with clean fragrance. And then we became fully clean like we are today in so far, it feels like a million years ago, probably 2010 when we officially launched
• 27:47
  We were 100% clean. But again, people were like, clean? They kept thinking natural, right? Oh, you're an essential oil brand. I'm like, no, we're not clean.
• 27:56
  you know, 100% natural. We use naturals, but we are clean. We don't use phthalates. We don't use hormone interrupters. We comb our ingredients. You can read our ingredients. A little bit of that education from my past days where people were like, I don't get it. Okay, I'm just going to call you natural. And you're like, okay, it's not really what we are, but if it makes you feel good, go crazy. So I think for us, the Sephora, I had pitched Sephora before and they were like,
• 28:26
  too far in and then they really I started to look into clean in a whole new way through skincare primarily and they reached out to us and were like hey you know have you would you be interested in sending your product in to Sephora and I was like yeah hell yeah oh my god it was so crazy
• 28:46
  I love that also like for me what stands out about you is that you're someone that is relentless in the pursuit of getting what you want. And also along that notion of like no now doesn't mean a no forever. Yeah.
• 29:04
  And it's just about being like open for when the no is a yes. I think, and I, you know, what's crazy is that I think that that's where your courage, your conviction is, right? That's where it comes back to. If you are not doing something that you truly believe in, that you truly love,
• 29:23
  you're not going to stay the course. 100%. And that is such an important part of it. And whatever that is, right, for you, that is what has to be your driving force. You're like, no, I know I can do this. I know this is a great product. I know that I'm going to, you know, this is better than what's on the market, whatever it is.
• 29:46
  You know, I think that's what has to drive you. But there is that, there is something within your entrepreneurial spirit. You know, it's like nature versus nurture, right? It's just in you. There's also, it's like a competitive sports person. They have a level of competitiveness and drive that, you know,
• 30:06
  makes them untouchable, right? And it's why they do the crazy shit that you're like, I could never do that. I mean, could I play basketball? Absolutely not, right? Ever in my life. Or any major sports. But, you know, if I can see something that I want, I will hammer away. And it also goes back to that, like,
• 30:27
  that saying it takes 10 years to reach overnight success because everyone just wants everything to happen immediately. But really, everything does take time and you really do have to have that
• 30:39
  you know, true conviction in what you're doing because nine times out of 10, yes, there's always the rare outlier that pops on TikTok and it grows immediately overnight. Fine. Sure. But also that person has still been hustling for, you know, the years in the lead up to figure out their pathway. And there has been something that's come, you know, beforehand. Yeah.
• 31:02
  So it's interesting. My mum would always say it to me. I don't actually know where it would come from, which was this saying, which is you either pay your dues in the beginning or you pay them at the end, but everyone pays them. So even if you have massive growth, like realistically, you're like, hey, I just talked about a hairbrush, right, and you're like got a lot of celebrity status, you've got a lot of pull, and it climbs massively and everyone's going to buy it. At some point, yeah.
• 31:29
  business now and real marketing and a really good product and all these things are going to come into that they may not come into it right at the beginning and you got all but then suddenly you're going to hit this plateau and people are going to be like actually this product isn't great why do I want it do I want to buy another one am I ever going to tell anyone else about it and then it just dies right so the true test are you going to tell a girlfriend about it and are you going to buy it twice
• 31:57
  Exactly, right? And that's the thing. I think that legacy brands overall, if you look at most of them, have these incredible whys, A, generally, why they started, why they're doing what they're doing. They have a lot of struggle in the beginning.
• 32:14
  And because they've had to change and move with the times and manipulate and have massive failures and have great successes and still come back and fight and push forward. And those are so important to have in entrepreneurial world.
• 32:33
  I wanted to ask you about something you have on your website to see how it's going, what's the impact been. And that's your $25 sample tester kit. I was reading through your reviews and it sounds like this has been just a great place for people to kind of discover the brand in an easy way. So I'd just love to kind of talk about this as a concept and as a marketing initiative and what it's been like.
• 32:58
  Yeah, so, you know, one of the biggest challenges for fragrance online is smelling it, of course, right? So I feel like it's really, most people don't buy fragrance blind unless it's like something that they know, like a Chanel No. 5, where it doesn't even matter if they like it, they just want Chanel No. 5 on their dresser. But...
• 33:18
  It was one of the huge challenges for fragrance and selling online. So it was something that we did actually a really long time ago. And initially we offered them for free.
• 33:31
  You know, we were a little tiny brand and I was like, hey, if you want to like sign up, we'll send you a free sample. We only had one or two fragrances at the time. And then as we started to look at it, I was like, you know what, this is a really great way now we're a collection line to have
• 33:49
  the experience of fragrance in your own home, in your own life, be able to give people enough product in each of these that they can really live in the fragrance for a week because fragrance is so subjective. It not only impacts your life, it impacts the life of people around you, right? Your animals, your partner, your work environment, all of these things are impacted by your fragrance. So it's so important to be able to try them and bring them home
• 34:19
  and a fragrance that is memorable. And that's really how it evolved into these sample sets, which is now our number one marketing tool. Absolutely.
• 34:32
  And from like the kind of economics of this as a channel to acquire new customers, are you kind of positioning it as like a break even? Is it a loss, but then you make it up, you know, because you see that people do come back and buy the full product or like, how does it kind of, how do you map it out?
• 34:50
  Yeah, so it's probably all said and done like a break even for us, but it is such a great marketing tool. And we are constantly acquiring new customers, right? That's how we're finding people. That's how people are discovering us. And what's cool is that they have this sort of physical object. So even if it's like something that maybe isn't for them, they give it to someone else. So they're like...
• 35:16
  You know, it's like paying it forward. Yeah. It always ends up in the hands of someone that loves it. You know, even if they're like, I hate this fragrance, I gave it to my mom or my sister or my cousin or whatever, that person. And the crazy stories of how we hear from our customers of how they found us. It's so many like that. I actually read that in some of the reviews, someone being like either I gave it to someone who loved it or I,
• 35:43
  you know, I received it from someone and I loved it and then I bought it. Like there was just, you've got like hundreds or maybe thousands actually of five-star reviews of people saying, you know, these funny little stories about how they came across the tester pack. It's very cool.
• 35:58
  You know, and word of mouth, there's nothing more than you take to heart than your closest girlfriend or family member being like, oh my God, you have to try this product. It's so amazing. Or this is a brand that I love because of XYZ and this is what they're doing. You've got to try their product. So yeah, we're working on a new one actually because we have a new fragrance coming out in the fall. But yeah, I spend so much time in design on this because I want it to feel...
• 36:28
  like this true experience of not only the fragrance but of who we are as a brand, what we stand for, what means something to us. You know, we're very much about community building, community give back, all of that. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about your community give back. I read that you had partnered with, I'm not sure how to say it properly, Lava May. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. They were...
• 36:54
  This is, again, years ago and I just found them randomly online and I loved everything that they were doing, which was providing, well, they always say providing dignity, right, to people who are finding it harder to find. So, yeah, they were redoing all of these old buses to be mobile shower stations for people.
• 37:20
  the homeless and people who couldn't, you know, otherwise have opportunity to just experience hygiene, like general hygiene. It was just so they were amazing. And now I think they have like 250 buses. We were one of the, we helped them finance like one, their first bus, I think it was. We did a fundraiser, just little. We gave a percentage of our like sales at the time. It was, honestly, it probably was,
• 37:49
  didn't really pay for anything now when I think of the amount of money that we donated. But it just, I just thought it was such a brilliant concept. That is so cool. I love that. Yeah. What's on the cards for you? What's next? What can you shout about? Oh, gosh. So, you know, we recently got into body and personal care. So, you know, that is, we have a new fragrance coming out, but our big
• 38:16
  kind of push is much more into personal care, personal experience through beautiful products. And then we're, of course, we're launching with one of our most, well, our new favourite retailer, which is 13 Loon. We're an ally brand for them.
• 38:31
  They are a new beauty retail concept going into all of the JCPenney stores. And they're about diverse, inclusive beauty, a lot of female founders, which is amazing, but really just about people doing something different, talking to a different community, a different market, and really sort of broadening everything out in a really exciting way.
• 38:55
  Congratulations. Sounds very exciting. Thank you. I'm really excited. It was founded actually by a girlfriend of mine. We started our brands together, what feels like a million years ago. Her name is Nakeo. She had like a coffee body scrub, which is amazing. But her and I would go to like Fred Siegel to the buyers and be like, hey, would you want to take our product from?
• 39:18
  We've known each other since then and then now to both be doing this collaboration, it feels amazing.
• 39:28
  That's so cool. We'll have to get her on the show. Oh, my God. She is the most phenomenal. And talk about, I mean, tenacity. Holy shit. I mean, we literally, her and I were, like, I remember she was bigger than me at the time as well and, you know, we were still just mixing stuff in our kitchens and it was just pushing a boulder up a fucking mountain.
• 39:53
  The story of every entrepreneur's life. Oh, my God. It's just, yes. It's, but, you know, and you don't ever feel like you get to the top. That's what's so crazy, I feel like, about entrepreneurship. Every person I speak to, whether or not they're in the billions or, you know, in the hundreds, they never feel like they've ever stopped pushing that boulder.
• 40:18
  Amen. What do you think is important advice for entrepreneurs in the beauty slash fragrance space?
• 40:30
  Now it's, you know, I mean, honestly, I think start small is always the greatest thing you can do. Really have a clear idea of what you want to create and why you want to create that. There is so much saturation in the market right now within beauty, particularly skincare, every element, colour, fragrance, right?
• 40:55
  I think you have to, there really has to be a strong why. What am I doing this for? Why does this product matter? Like I think you can, if you, you know, want to be an entrepreneur and you're not really sure where you want to put your, you know, stamp on things in which market, that's the most important thing to find.
• 41:16
  Like don't just bring out a product for the hell of it because now it's too competitive. There's so much out there. And the one thing we're actually missing, I think, is innovation. You know, we're not seeing as many brilliant breakthroughs in new products at the moment. You know, a lot of it's just the same. So I just think, you know, sit with it for a minute, you know, and be like, okay, is what I am currently doing, is it just another thing on the market or is it something?
• 41:46
  that really is going to make an impact in someone's life environmentally, you know, personally, what have you. Yeah. Is there a true point of difference? What's the difference? Yes. And those differences can be
• 41:58
  teeny right like they really can but something that just feels like this is what I want and it can also be like a product that's based around a completely different point of view right that maybe hasn't been spoken about before if you can go into that space and shout loudly a hundred percent yes exactly
• 42:23
  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.
• 42:48
  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.
• 43:10
  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.
• 43:26
  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.
• 43:51
  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.
• 44:13
  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.