Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / GEMS: The Early Blueprint with Sienna Naturals founder Hannah Diop

Transcript

GEMS: The Early Blueprint with Sienna Naturals founder Hannah Diop · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:08
  So how'd you start? What were those early steps in like actually bringing this to life? Obviously, when there's, you know, manufacturing and building a formulation or capital, like what are the, what's the blueprint, if you will, if you had to kind of step someone through those early years?
• 0:27
  Yeah, so I actually wrote like a strategy and I really started focusing on an issue that I had had as a child, which was eczema. And so I wanted to create like a very simple regimen, which included a shampoo, which also could be a body wash, a conditioner product and a body cream.
• 0:46
  And they would all go toward addressing that. I also focused on, and this one, I don't know why I did, but I focused on the mommy market. And this was with like zero marketing dollars going after women who were pregnant because the product was so clean and safe. The idea in my mind was you can use it during pregnancy and you can use it on your baby and yourself. And it's formulated for textured hair. Yeah.
• 1:10
  But it was just like trying to bite off too much at once. And also you need money to go after women. Women don't even know they're pregnant. You know, they don't know they're pregnant until like a few months in. Then you've got to convert them into a customer and then they might not use it when they're done being pregnant. Right. So like it was really it was a really tough customer segment to go after. So I ended up pivoting and going a little more broadly.
• 1:34
  And then ultimately pivoting again and being more kind of laser focused on hair and scalp health, because that's where I saw the most traction with my core customer in terms of getting started. So the brand went through a number of pivots before I sort of landed in the sweet spot where we are now.
• 1:52
  When you say, you know, before it got traction, what did that traction actually look like for anyone listening who might be feeling, you know, they're at a point in their journey where they don't know if they're on the right track or they don't know what the signal should be to keep going?
• 2:07
  Well, I did have some traction. So I was selling product. But back in those in 2012, 14, 15, I was still really focused on like winning a major account. Like I needed a national Whole Foods to come on board and I needed...
• 2:23
  you know, a big, a major retailer to sort of give me that check of approval. That was sort of how I measured success. And so that was kind of what I was going after. I was selling on my own dot com and I was selling on Amazon, but I sort of was seeing a retail partner as a commitment from a retailer as an opportunity to fundraise and an opportunity to really then try and scale the business from the bootstrapped stage.
• 2:50
  And if you were to, like, looking back in hindsight, is that still how you would perceive that traction if you were to start again, say, tomorrow? No, I think I would have. I mean, I would say if I could go back because now the landscape is changing all the time, like with iOS 14 rolling out and everything. But I think I could have benefited from being more D2C focused early on versus seeking this outside approval from a merchant.
• 3:18
  I think I was a little too fixated on that, to be honest, because I did have proof of concept. I had customers who loved the product. I had customers who were buying the product. So I think I could have invested more there. But I was so, yeah, that would be my critique. That's so interesting.
• 3:40
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• 4:04
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• 4:27
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