Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / SUMMER ‘23 - From Lawyer to Beauty Founder Stocked in Sephora, with Hyper Skin Founder Desiree Verdejo (Part 1)

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SUMMER ‘23 - From Lawyer to Beauty Founder Stocked in Sephora, with Hyper Skin Founder Desiree Verdejo (Part 1) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  Hey, it's Dune here. I'm recording this quick message to let you know that over the next few weeks, we'll be playing some of our favorite episodes from the past year while I spend some time with my best friends and family back in my other home, London. If you missed these episodes the first time around, they are so good and packed with so much value. I know you're going to love them just as much as I did recording them. See you soon. Bye.
• 0:27
  This is Desiree Vedejo for Female Startup Club.
• 0:40
  Hey guys, welcome back to the show. Today's episode is sponsored by The Donut, a 100% free newsletter committed to making the news more enjoyable. Sign up today at thedonut.co forward slash hype. And if you're new here, hi, I'm Dune, your host and hype girl in business. Every week we learn from seven, eight, and nine figure female founders to understand their blueprint in business when it comes to money, marketing, and mistakes. Okay.
• 1:09
  Women like Desiree Vedejo, the founder of HyperSkin. After leaving her career as an attorney, Desiree left the 9 to 5 to create the Sephora for Black women, which eventually led her to creating Hyper. Today we're chatting through a bunch of insightful learnings from the business, like the power of PR and how to use grants to access capital. Hi, I'm going to be here for you.
• 1:31
  And on that note, remember that you can access our doc for every single grant that's currently live around the world for female founders. You can get the list at femalestartupclub.com forward slash grants. Let's jump into today's episode. This is Desiree for Female Startup Club. Desiree, hi. Welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Hi, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
• 1:58
  I'm excited to be here too. I know you're in New York. I know it's early evening for you. Do you have any wins or oh shit moments from today that are worth sharing?
• 2:10
  Um, today, I mean, I have so many oh shit moments on so many days. Um, I have two little kids, so that balance just always makes for, oh shit, I forgot something. Oh shit, this came up. So nothing major, but just the daily balance is, is always entertaining. Yes, I can imagine. I can imagine. Yeah. For anyone tuning in who might not know you yet, how do you like to introduce yourself? Um, yeah.
• 2:37
  Sure. I am the founder of Hyper Skin. Hyper is a targeted skincare brand speaking to under addressed skincare concerns in the market, and it's rooted in multiculturalism.
• 2:53
  Yeah, so that's me and that's my baby that I'm building. Oh my gosh, I'm excited to get into this journey today. When I was reading about you and your backstory, I know that you originally started your entrepreneurial journey with a business in 2015. It was a beauty boutique and I read that it was dubbed the Sephora for women of color. And so it was a retail experience where you stocked lots of different beautiful, wonderful brands and...
• 3:18
  And I imagine for you that was a great opportunity to get kind of direct insights and kind of learnings for consumer habits and buying habits and just interest in what people were kind of wanting to buy. And I also imagine that was a place for you to see gaps in the market. So I'd love to kind of talk about that time a little bit to understand, firstly, what were the challenges with that model that made you decide to pivot away from that? And what did you learn from building the beauty boutique?
• 3:49
  I love that question. Yeah. Building a beauty boutique definitely gives you like a front row view to, you know, what's doing well at the time and generally like the way customers shop. And so it's definitely where the inspiration for Hyper came. I think I learned a lot about packaging and I learned a lot about the importance of name, naming your products. You know, for us, we're
• 4:13
  Because that's sort of the customer that we like to speak to who has a skincare concern. And she's like, just wants a direct response. But yeah, I learned so much about what customers were drawn to, ingredients, how they shop when they have a real concern, a pressing concern versus when they're feeling like their hair is healthy or their skin is unhealthy.
• 4:34
  you know, thriving. So I really poured all of those insights into the decisions that I made when it came to Hyper. But the actual decision to create Hyper was actually born from that store as well. Like you said, 2015 through 2018 is when my store was
• 4:53
  in existence in New York. And we had like all of these really beautiful natural hair care lines, like products for textured hair. They were like on the rise. There were a lot of color cosmetic brands popping up that were realizing that, you know, we need foundation for-
• 5:11
  And people with super skin tones. And so we were focused on the indie brand. So not the fancy skins, but like the lip bar, for example, which is thriving in Target right now was was a brand on our shelves when they were just a lipstick line. And so, yeah, I saw all of these these solutions. Yeah.
• 5:29
  coming to market, but the skincare space was not speaking. It just was not centering certain concerns, not centering hyperpigmentation, not centering razor bumps or sun care for deeper skin tones, or just so many issues were not being spoken to. The storytelling wasn't centered on deeper skin tones, a variety of skin tones, and the education wasn't there. And we all know like
• 5:53
  With skincare, it's not just here's a product, but here's how you use it. Here's how it works for you. Here's how it benefits your skin. And so being in that space made me realize like there is a real need for this and I'm shopping for it as a buyer. But like, I think I think I'm doing it. I think I'm making this product. I think I'm starting this line.
• 6:14
  And so were you like thinking, okay, I'm going to shut this business down and find a supplier, find a manufacturer and kind of start formulating my own products? Or were you kind of like, let's do both at the same time? Or what was that transition like?
• 6:30
  So at first I was going to do both at the same time. You know, I had this business. It was thriving in terms of brand awareness, but we did not manage to figure out how we would capitalize on the business model. I see so many amazing retail outlets now where they're partnering with major, like there's a 13 Loon company.
• 6:54
  a brilliant retail space with a similar approach to multicultural brands and black and brown founded brands, partnering with other key retailers, etc. But I hadn't figured out how to capitalize on the brand, although we were being featured everywhere on social media and in the press.
• 7:15
  At the same time, this idea had come along. And because of my connections in beauty, I was like working with a chemist, picking out packaging. And I think because I hadn't figured out how to make the store happen, it very easily allowed me to focus on the skincare line. But also I realized that...
• 7:37
  I think if I'd made it part of that store, I wouldn't be able to tell the story, the full story that it needed to tell. Like, I think you have to give a lot of information. I mean, a brand requires a lot of storytelling, but I also think, like, you just need so much information sharing when it comes to building a skincare brand. And so...
• 7:57
  It just didn't work, the two. Well, yeah, it just didn't work. It kind of – I'm drawing a connection to – I used to have a jewelry brand, and something that I struggled with the jewelry brand is there's so many different products you need to have, like – and we built the model around, like, monthly drops. So there was total newness, total newness, total newness, and you couldn't stack –
• 8:19
  the marketing of this one particular thing. So I really found myself being like, I wish I had just like one product to market instead of 50 products to market, because that's 50 different ads to see, you know, which product is specifically working and then doubling down on that one. But then it's sold out and then it's the next month's stuff. So you're kind of like starting from scratch all over again. And I can see a similarity in terms of, you know,
• 8:40
  you know, a marketplace beauty retailer that's got multiple different brands, you're essentially having to promote and advertise all these different brands instead of just the one brand or your, you know, your actual store, as it were. So I can see how that can be also a big challenge.
• 8:59
  It was a huge challenge. I mean, I think it's exactly what I set out to do was to really like highlight these beautifully done brands. But at the same time, it was very hard to tell every story and to bring it back to the boutique, you know, especially if you're a retailer, but the brand is also sold at another retailer or on Amazon, et cetera. What I realized was that we
• 9:25
  get this great press or et cetera for the brands, but the business didn't always come back to us. And so that was frustrating, but also just made me realize, like, I just want one story to tell. Like, I love this part of it. Clear messaging. Yeah. Clear, straightforward, bring it back home. Yeah. You mentioned something a second ago about the importance of a name, and that's something that you learned in that process. What do you mean by that?
• 9:53
  Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, customers are looking for something that speaks directly to them. And so I think that, you know, it's the colors, it's the packaging, it's even the name. And so for us, like hyper, you know, signals a lot of things. Hyperpigmentation is this major skincare concern, especially when you're dealing with deeper skin tones.
• 10:10
  But it's also this like energetic word. It's also just sort of a modern like poppy word. And so I do think that like every aspect of a brand. Easy to read. Easy to say. Yeah, easy to say. And so I realized that the brands on my shelves that did well, they had names that were like that, that just caught on. I mean, there were some brands, I think, where...
• 10:34
  you know, Ventnor's Daughter or something where, you know, there might be a mouthful or et cetera. But I found that the cashier products were like easier, you know, names to connect with.
• 10:48
  For names like yours, hyper is an amazing word, but I also imagine that could be a word that could be hard to trademark, being so short and kind of like, you know, a regular word that we all use. Was it difficult or? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we can talk offline about trademark battles, but...
• 11:09
  you cannot easily trademark a common word. And so you can trademark, you know, variations of the word, but not a common word. And so unfortunately what we are seeing is that people are trying to incorporate hyper into the names of their serums because of the success of ours.
• 11:26
  Another thing to think about is, is, you know, using a word that is not a common, common word in the English language. Yeah. Do you think in hindsight, you would do it the same way again? Or do you think you would have then chosen a word that was short and buzzy, but also maybe unique?
• 11:45
  Short, buzzy, and unique. I think if someone asked me today, I would say short, buzzy, and if you can make it up, even better. Okay. Yeah. Great piece of feedback. Thank you. I'd love to start talking more about Hyperskin specifically and how that kind of got started.
• 12:02
  We love to talk about the money piece and kind of what you needed to invest to get your first product run, your first kind of like the website up and running and get you to launch basically. What did you need to invest and how were you thinking about, you know, capital at that time? Yeah. So the interesting thing is I started Hyper with a very small amount. I started it with $12,000
• 12:32
  to start with such a small amount. I had been sort of business planning hyper, in the lab with hyper, I had my hyper samples. And I was like, I'm going to fundraise. But at the time, I had no idea what fundraising really looked like. I also, because this was my second business, was like, I'm not taking out business loans. I'm not going down that path. And so there was a point where I just realized, I need to put something into the world
• 13:02
  And then I will be able to fundraise with that, with the success of that, with the proof that comes from that. And so Hyper was born with the amount of money that I had, you know, disposable in my bank account at the time, which was $12,000, definitely not a lot. I did a small run of one product.
• 13:25
  We developed a number of products, but I said, this is my hero. And it is our still three years later, our hero, our serum. I like you use this on day one, use it on day 30. You can see the difference. That is what we are going to drive home.
• 13:38
  We created a website using Fiverr. Beautiful website, not the same website that we have today, but very proud of the website. I think I spent like $200 on that website, not including the apps and all of the things that can make your website incredibly expensive, but I'm trying to think of like the key things that we did. But I think investing in the packaging was my major investment. I found a junior designer on Instagram
• 14:06
  And so I was able to do it affordably, but with the aesthetic that I was looking for. Did it look the same as it looks now or have you rebranded? We did do a slight rebrand. So we have the same colors and the same component, but we did make our, I switched designers and we made our logo much more outstanding because we were going onto the shelves we recently launched in Sephora. So when we did that, we were like, this needs to stand out on the shelf. And so we made some tweaks to it, but very similar aesthetic. Yeah.
• 14:36
  Yeah. What was, I think, and the other big thing was that we did a bunch of gifting, which I think sometimes when I talk to other business owners, they're reluctant to gift products because they don't have a lot of products and they don't have a lot of money. But I'm like, no one can talk about a product they didn't try. Yeah, absolutely.
• 15:05
  And that was a big part of us getting, you know, quite a bit of unboxings and press in our first couple of months. Oh, my gosh. Amazing. I love that. And so you had this kind of like you had this budget, $12,000, small amount to get your first run of products, your website, your designer for the packaging, your actual packaging, and then this hundred gifts online.
• 15:30
  What was the kind of impact that you saw from that around launch? Like, what was the buzz that you were getting? And what was, you know, is that like 20 orders on launch day? Or is that like a thousand orders in a couple of months? Or what was the kind of result? Oh, that's a good question. Yeah, I think, did we get 20 orders online?
• 15:49
  I mean, I think launch day is always great, right? Because you have friends and family. But we were, I think, getting in that 20 orders daily. And I was like, oh, wow. Killing it. Yeah, amazing. I'm going to sell through these thousands of units. I am very pleased. But we did get a lot of press.
• 16:07
  We initially gifted a number of editors that we were friendly with because of my boutique. And I think because other editors saw that we were being written about, they were open to writing about us. And so for a brand with no budget, we did get quite a bit of press. And at the time, social media was, I guess, Instagram was very different. And so...
• 16:30
  we were able to get in front of people organically there with like photographs, you know, we didn't have to like be movie editors. So, so Instagram was also just like a good platform for growth, I guess like TikTok is today. And so that was also a key piece. So we did some, you know, influencer giftings to get unboxings and it, that really worked out for us in the beginning.
• 16:56
  And if you had to kind of distill dot point form, you know, getting from that kind of early launch buzz and excitement, because I feel like there's like a bit of a peak. It goes up where you're like, yep, okay, we've launched, there's buzz, blah. And then it kind of starts to just like calm down. And then you've got to like find that ongoing momentum to get to, say, your first 1,000 customers. Yeah.
• 17:18
  So if you had to talk about, you know, in those early days with no budget, like what are you doing on a daily basis to keep driving those daily orders and, you know, hundreds of orders over the next few months? Yeah. People don't talk about that. It's always exciting. Like every editor likes to launch, right? So. Yes. Great. But we had one product for.
• 17:41
  at least one year, I want to say a year and a half, but somewhere in there. We were talking about this product for a long time. Then we had to bring in, I think my first hire after a couple of months was a consultant focused on retention marketing. So emails, text messaging, so that we could really reconnect with people that had made it to our website somehow. And so I think I started to invest in like, how can I convert the traffic?
• 18:08
  So that was a key thing. I'm just thinking early days. We continued the press push in so many, in just every way we could. But you do need to be more creative when it's not a launch, right? But fortunately, our products, we had these like great before and after. So we went from this product hit the market to this.
• 18:28
  this product really works. So we started speaking about multicultural skincare, hyperpigmentation, just vitamin C is a hot topic. And so still I was our everything outside of this consultant, but really started pitching if you would say that because I didn't do it in any formal way, pitching just different approaches to speaking to our serum and also gifting influencers.
• 18:54
  as we continue to grow. I feel like you have a lot of amazing press. And even when you scroll back to kind of your early days on Instagram and things like that, you can see that you were, you know, you were getting a lot of press, which it sounds like you were doing yourself. You were pitching people and kind of putting the story out there. And I'm sure following up, it's all in the follow-ups. It's all in the follow-ups. Yeah.
• 19:15
  What is your advice to early stage founders? Because I feel like a lot of people can get trapped in this phase of like, let's hire an agency, let's spend thousands of dollars. And we know that it takes six months to get any results. And it's, you know, you can end up like spending a lot of money really quickly. What is your advice? And what do you do now for PR? Like, have you transitioned into agency land or are you still kind of trying to do it in house? What's your thoughts on PR?
• 19:43
  I know it's an important piece, especially for you. It's an important piece. And we have had PR agencies. We have cycled. This is a question that is always, well, I'll start with the beginning in terms of anyone with a startup and a product that is a story, you know, has a story worth telling. I would say once you know the story.
• 20:03
  well enough to convey it to someone, start to pitch it. And you can do that yourself. I mean, there's a bandwidth question there. There's a stage when you know you have to pass it on to someone else. And so there was a clear stage where I realized I should not be doing this, although I can, because my time should be spent doing something else. And so we have tested PR. I think we're in a stage now with it being, you know, the landscape changing. And we're like, what do we want from PR? Like,
• 20:30
  do we want a press hit in a digital magazine or are we looking for something else? What is the significance of awards in 2023? And so I think we're asking those questions. And so I did a pullback from PR just to sort of figure out what I'm,
• 20:47
  what I'm asking of our team. But early days, I think I always had to remind myself when I felt like I was being annoying by emailing someone or going on their LinkedIn that like the editors are looking for stories every day and you have a story. So you're not bothering anyone, you know? Let them know about your story. Obviously, tailor who you're reaching out to. Like if you have a product that speaks to, you know, has a great skincare ingredient,
• 21:17
  then hit up the publications and the editors that really, you know, focus on that because they're going to love it, you know? So be really like tuned into who you're reaching out to, but like never hold back because they're telling stories every day. So why not yours? Oh, I love that. Yeah. Three years later, I'm just like, what, what are we, what are we looking for? What's our goal? Because we are organically getting a lot of digital press hits, but, but,
• 21:46
  What does that mean? And what is the value? And, you know, I think a lot of, I think, you know, a lot of businesses are asking themselves that question. Yeah. Justify every line on that P&L. Yeah. We're so small. So we still have to do that and trace it back. You know, there's a content piece, but there's also like, how does this convert? So. How big is your team now? Our team is still small. There are six of us, myself and five others. So.
• 22:16
  Just everyone's awesome. Everyone works hard. I have an all-women team and they're all just so awesome. So, yeah, yeah. Something that I noticed when I was looking back at, you know, your content and reading articles about you is that you were kind of putting yourself forward for awards and grants and kind of things like the Tory Birch Foundation and 15% Pledge.
• 22:45
  You know, how, I guess my question is like multi-part question again. It's like, what advice do you have for early stage founders who are looking for grants and things like that in the sense of like, I know it can take a lot of time to put into these applications and apply. So you don't want to kind of,
• 23:03
  apply where you're wasting time, but also you do want to get access to potentially capital or mentorship or something from these programs. So what is your thoughts and how helpful have these accelerators, grants, things like that been for you?
• 23:18
  Um, okay. That's a great one. So mixed responses. And I should say, I don't apply for grants enough. I've actually only applied for two. The ones you mentioned. Oh, okay. Yeah. Wow. Great for you then. Great success record. Yeah. I know founders that are very active with applying for grants. I don't always because sometimes it's like,
• 23:40
  A small amount, the application is pages long, but the 15% pledge grant, for example, which we just recently won, there was a high dollar amount. I realized, I mean, I just thought the creator of the 50% pledge was brilliant, the board, the team.
• 23:57
  And I realized that the award was being given at their gala, just this packed room of brilliant fashion and retail minds because of the premise of the pledge itself. And so I realized, like, if I'm going to get an award, that is exactly, no matter the dollar amount, the room that I would want to get it in. And so, and this is the type of organization that I want to work with, whether I win or not.
• 24:24
  And I had the same feeling with the Tory Burch organization, although that was years ago. So I am a bit more removed from that. But yeah, I think it was like, I just want to work with this organization. And I think those two things kind of made me, pushed me to apply. And then fortunately, I won a grant, but I definitely think.
• 24:46
  It is important to think about different types of capital. I know I'm at the stage as a three-year-old startup where it's all fundraising, fundraising, fundraising. We actually do not have any VC backing. And I don't promote one way or another, but I do promote really being thoughtful about when you fundraise, how much you fundraise, and why you're doing it.
• 25:08
  And so does that look like for you then you're raising through angels and kind of other partners outside of VC? Yeah, for us, we have brought on a few angel investors very recently. And that has been been our focus. I'm not I could foresee us.
• 25:28
  taking in venture capital and in the life of our company. But I'm just really thoughtful about how much of our company we sell and at what stage and the valuation and all of those things. So
• 25:42
  Something that I read as well, oh, I guess we spoke about it a moment ago, is you recently launched into Sephora. You launched into 250 stores, which is so exciting and huge congratulations. What was that kind of journey like getting into Sephora? Like, I'm sure a lot of people listening into this show are like, oh my God, I dream of being in 250 Sephora stores. How do you get there? How do you get to a point where you're launching into 250 stores?
• 26:11
  Yeah, it was definitely, I manifested, it was on all of the charts when I had my like $12,000. I was like, and we're getting to Sephora. And I think about six months into our business, we started reaching out to and had outreach. I think we had outreach, which gave me the confidence to reach out to various retailers. And Sephora was, I want to say I didn't,
• 26:36
  DMs on LinkedIn, like the buyer. And again, with buyers, I have the same viewpoint. They're looking, you've got something, like go for it when you're ready, when you have,
• 26:49
  The packaging, the story. For us, I waited until we had community. We were able to prove, like, I think with press and all of these various things. What did that message look like? Like that quick, like LinkedIn kind of DM? Like, is it like a detailed, like, here's six paragraphs about the brand? Or is it like a, hey, let's chat? No, it's that, you know, they tell you to have your one minute elevator pitch. Well, you need to have your two line DM.
• 27:16
  And I say DM, but I only mean on LinkedIn. Don't DM someone on Instagram. I hate a DM on Instagram for business. But yeah, it's that two sentence bit perfected. What would you say? Like, what was the actual kind of, what points do you hit on in a two sentence? I think like hyper-targeted, hyperpigmentation, multicultural,
• 27:39
  I think we had like 15,000 people and you could not tell me that wasn't the entire world following us on Instagram, you know, and we were just featured in A, B and C, a lore and this and that.
• 27:51
  And I would love to like share more. Like this is what I have. And we spoke to amazing buyers, but Sephora was always my goal buyer. I should, you know, go back to the fact that I've always had acne-prone skin. Like since high school, I have always struggled with chronic acne.
• 28:12
  And so while I do love like beautiful products, well packaged products, like I've always been the clinical skincare girl. And so Sephora was the go to, you know, in terms of like the Dr. This and Mirad and all of the great acne treatments outside of like Proactiv. And so I just knew that like Sephora would get what we were creating.
• 28:35
  And yeah, we had a great conversation about what we were building. And very shortly after that, they actually, we mentioned the grants and the gala, but they signed on to the 15% pledge, which I should mention is like a pledge to make sure that 15% of your shelves are Black-owned, which is reflective of the U.S. population. I think at the time it was a single-digit percentage for Sephora. Yeah.
• 29:03
  And so I think some things just happened while we were having conversations. It was a great conversation, another great conversation, them signing the pledge where I said, you know, I think this is, you know, I knew in manifestation stage that it was Sephora. But now I'm thinking that this is the partner that I can see our brand really growing with and really getting the support that we need, because when you're a young brand like.
• 29:28
  You have something that they want, but you also need to know that you're going to be supported because you can't have the same playbook as you.
• 29:36
  Fenty, you know, so I was just like really excited. Yeah, that was my next question. So if you're a booth shop brand and you're launching into, and you know, I know you've just said you've just recently brought on some angels, but you're launching into 250 stores that obviously costs a lot of money. You need a lot of inventory. You need a lot of marketing dollars. Whereas someone like Fenty Beauty or, you know,
• 30:00
  A L'Oreal brand is like, hey, we've got like millions of dollars lined up, ready to go. Like, where do you need some cash kind of thing? So how does a brand like Sephora support indie beauty brands? And like, how do you work together to make it happen?
• 30:17
  Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of retailers are trying to figure this out right now. So I won't present this sort of perfect picture, but for us, they have an accelerator, an annual accelerator. We were in their 2020 class. And I think that was helpful from an information
• 30:33
  perspective. I had, by the time I launched in Sephora, I've been out of the corporate arena for a handful of years. And so that was like an introduction to all of the different sides of their organization, which was really helpful. An introduction to successful brands on their shelves and some of their, you know, their playbooks. And so that was also really helpful. An introduction to investors, which I should say, no matter where you fall on, whether you're
• 31:03
  raising or not, you should be talking to them. I always am. So I think that was like their first level of support. And I think as we grow, we're on their shelves as a brand now. I think they have tried to figure it out in a lot of ways because they do realize that they can't just tell us, um,
• 31:24
  you know, some of them spend this amount of marketing dollars. Like, oh, how about ads on all of the New York City subway trains? Like, we might not be able to do that. So there has been a lot of working together, for example, on social media campaigns, et cetera, which has been great. Yeah, amazing.
• 31:44
  It's going to be interesting when we look back in a few years to see how it has changed. And, you know, we know that brands are doing more to support indie brands. Like Target's a really great example as well of brands that are trying to foster more of the indie brands and bring them up. So it'll be interesting to look back. It's what customers want. Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, and I think, you know, a lot of brands have grown on the shelves of Sephora. So it's not like...
• 32:10
  they're just beginning to do this. You know, I think some of the brands we love, like the Tatchas and the Youth to the Peoples and the Briogeos, they started out with a couple of products on the shelves of Sephora. And it's true for a lot of the other retailers as well. Um, so they, it's not a question that they've never had to address, but I, you know, changing times require changing strategies. So it's, it's great to be like working hand in hand with someone, um,
• 32:34
  Because they can see like the benefit. They've seen it, you know. They see the Briogeos of the world that. Yes. And the potential. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. What are the kind of fun, exciting things that you can shout about for this year that are like your, you know, shifting the needle moments now?
• 32:52
  What we're planning to do or what we have done. It could be either. Whatever you want to shout about. Yeah. I mean, last year was a big one for us. Like I mentioned, we launched as a single SKU brand. And so we launched additional products, still targeted to hyperpigmentation. And they were so well accepted. We won a lower best of beauty.
• 33:15
  our customers loved us. We launched in Sephora. So yeah, last year is like a hard year to beat. So this year we're like, a big goal of ours is just growing within Sephora. So, you know, I think being a brand that is DTC, that is digital first, and then going in store, going brick and mortar, launching a brand in 2020 during a recession. And then now it's 2023. And like, people are like,
• 33:40
  I want to be entertained outside. I think for us, that sort of brick and mortar offline shift is like our biggest challenge. So like thriving in these stores, meeting beauty advisors, getting our products into actual hands, like that is like where our focus is. And then of course newness, like we are in the kitchen, like we have some amazing products coming to market this year.
• 34:06
  We are hyper-targeted. So hyperpigmentation is on our, you know, list of important concerns, but it's not the only one. So I'm super excited to see how our customer and our community, like, responds to everything else we put out this year. So, yeah, it's just like a year of, like, newness and growth and, like, just making sure that our customer is happy with what we're putting into the world.
• 34:29
  Oh, sounds so exciting. Love that. Me too. What piece of advice can you leave us with? And especially for women of color who might be listening right now, who are sitting at their nine to five dreaming of starting a business or who are like in that early phase of launching something. What is your kind of best piece of advice that you like to share?
• 34:52
  I think something that I have to remind myself of is to like, appreciate, like celebrate the work you've done thus far. I think that's more so to the newer founders. Um, it's so easy to look around and say, wow, this brand did this. They have five new products. They raised this much money there. And how many were in two 50 there in two 55. Like it is so easy to, um, fall into that trap, but like
• 35:20
  I think as founders, every day we do so much. I mean, we all do so much, whatever your job is. But like, I know as founders, it's daunting. And so I just really encourage people to stay focused on what they're building and not be so focused on what's going on around them. Be inspired. Take tips. There's education in everything. But really celebrate where you are and what you're doing, because it's a lot. And I think- It's bloody hard to do that. Yeah.
• 35:49
  It's hard to do. It's so hard to do. I mean, sometimes I have to put social media down to do that, but it's really important. Yeah, it's really important. I think, you know, the, I transitioned, I was a lawyer before opening a boutique, before starting a product line. And so I think it's a little different when you're
• 36:06
  when you're trying to change careers. But I would just say, you know, there's something that you can do at every stage. I remember being a lawyer and writing a business plan and trying to meet people and learn. This was when I was opening my store. So just remember that you can be in your role and making so much progress towards the business that you want to create. And if you can learn anything that helps your business on the job that you have, do that because-
• 36:36
  I admire the people that are like, I worked at L'Oreal and then I launched it. That's amazing.
• 36:41
  That's so amazing. So I guess that's a lot of advice because there are lessons every day. But I think sometimes you're like, I just want to like jump ship. Don't jump ship. Like do as much as you can do. One step at a time. One step at a time. There's so much that you can do before you jump ship. So make sure you've done it all. So that was a jumble of advice. I hope that there were some nuggets there. I love a jumble. I'm all for a jumble. Bring it on.
• 37:12
  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.
• 37:36
  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.
• 37:59
  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.
• 38:15
  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.
• 38:39
  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.
• 39:02
  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.