Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / "Invest in your IP!” From $15,000 to 8-Figure Biz with Shhhowercap Inventor Jacquelyn De Jesu (Part 1)

Transcript

"Invest in your IP!” From $15,000 to 8-Figure Biz with Shhhowercap Inventor Jacquelyn De Jesu (Part 1) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Jacqueline DJ Zoo for Female Startup Club. Hello and welcome back to the show. It's Dune here, your host and hype girl. And today I am so hyped because this chat with Jacqueline DJ Zoo is on another level.
• 0:27
  Jackie is the founder and inventor of ShowerCap, and she has such an interesting, insight-packed journey to share with us today. We're also going to be talking through her learnings and her journey after going through a multi-year legal battle for her intellectual property. And for anyone who's listening in right now who...
• 0:49
  might be going through something similar or even just starting to see your invention and your designs ripped off by copycats, there is some great advice and gems and learnings packed in here. Now, before we jump in, if you do learn something from this episode, or even if you just love it as much as I do, make sure you let Jackie know. Send her a cute DM or share a screenshot tagging us on Instagram because you know how much I love it when you do that.
• 1:19
  Okay, let's jump into this episode. This is Jacqueline, DJ Zoo for Female Startup Club. Jackie, hi, welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. I'm so excited. I've been following you for so long. I love it. Oh my God, really? I love that for me and for you. I post all the time. I'm probably like three of your reshares a week.
• 1:42
  I just, it really resonated. Oh my God. I love that. Thank you. Yeah. Like I get such a thrill when I see other people share our stuff, but I was watching your video, the reel that you had posted recently, which, which we'll get into, but I was then clicking through your stories and I saw that you had reshared something of ours and I was like, Oh my God, that's me. Yay.
• 2:03
  Well, I love this for us. Thank you for joining me. I am so excited to get into this conversation and learn all about your business and your decade-ish long journey, maybe more than a
• 2:19
  Yeah. So yeah, I'm really excited. Yeah, me too. For context, for our listeners, I watched a video that you posted the other day about a story that's happening in your business at the moment or a specific chapter that's going on in your business at the moment. And I want to get into that, but I want to kind of like lead into that a bit later. I'm thinking we start at the beginning, go back to the original kind of roots of where your entrepreneurial journey actually starts. So where do you like to start your story?
• 2:48
  The beginning. When I was a kid, maybe. It's so core. Like what created Shower Cap and what empowered me to be able to take an idea and turn it into something and then scale it is so, it's such a response to how I was raised. I'm the daughter of two creative entrepreneurs. My mom is a professional hairdresser and makeup artist. So I grew up on set.
• 3:13
  Everybody knows like the Euphoria makeup trailer. I was like this precocious little three-year-old, four-year-old like running around the makeup trailer, you know, hold on to set when they need extra. But that's really where I learned beauty from the experts. My mom had a salon that my dad built her for when she wasn't gigging, like with the A-list stars and on TV and sets. And I grew up in a really, what's the PC term? Diverse neighborhood.
• 3:42
  And because of that, like I saw one thing that unified everyone. Right. It didn't matter your hair type or texture. It was how you felt when you came in and how you felt when you left. And it was so inspiring to me, even as a young kid, like what great hair or what feeling like you had great hair actually does. And my dad owns a set design company.
• 4:06
  Wow, cool. So I was, yeah, I was the daughter, the only child of the two of them. And I was always tinkering, you know, they were creative people and creative professionals and creative entrepreneurs. And my mom was kind of successful in the gig economy. She, what did she, she trained under Vidal Sassoon, like in the 70s and 80s, like the Vidal Sassoon. Insane.
• 4:33
  And yeah, I mean, I just like so many of my play dates. I don't know if this is true to you, but like for me, there was like the house that had the great snacks and there was the house that had all of the cable channels. And there was the house that like had fun siblings and there was the house that like the parents didn't care. And then there was the house that like, I don't know, but we were the craft house. Oh, I love that.
• 4:58
  I had a wall of like boxes of beads and all of the female clays. And like every time that I had a play date, they would leave with something. Oh my God. The dream. The dream. When I was growing up, my grandma was like the craft queen. And so I get like a lot of creativity from her. And she used to have, you know, these...
• 5:21
  same as what you're explaining, like boxes and boxes of beads and buttons and vintage things and scraps of material. And we would create these long tables on holidays, me and my cousins, and we would get to sit there and just like make all this stuff. And I lived at this store in Australia called Spotlight where you would go and it's like this huge mega store that has like –
• 5:41
  all the stuff and it's just so cool. Actually, there's this amazing store that you would love. It's in Bali in Indonesia. And it's basically like this huge, huge, like kind of factory kind of space, but it has millions and billions of beads and like trimmings and sequins and like everything that you didn't even know that you wanted, but you absolutely want when you get there. And it's like, when I step in there, I'm so overstimulated, but I just...
• 6:10
  Love it so much. It's so fun. Love that for you. No, it's amazing. And, and to that point, if we're talking about like my lineage and how it built me, my grandma was an inventor. She actually. What did she invent? Cool. She had this, this line of dolls in the eighties called moon babies. They're actually in, um, what's the chick, the comedian, Amy Schumer. Yeah.
• 6:35
  She's in her bed in one of the pictures of her childhood and she has moon babies like in the actual picture in her book. That's the only time that I've seen them recently. You kind of have to like dig around on eBay for them. But they were right. They had these long legs and they all sat on moons and they all were different moons and they all were different like characters.
• 6:55
  Oh my God. That's so cool. I just try to Google it, but I'm going to like do a deeper search afterwards so I can see like what they are. Did you have like other inventions that didn't see the light of day, you know, throughout your childhood and you're kind of growing up? I had other entrepreneurial things. Like I was always building and growing and selling, you know, if that makes sense. Like my first...
• 7:21
  concert was Beach Boys. And my parents were like, okay, cool. You want to go to the Beach Boys concert at Jones Beach? Let's have a garage sale. You have to make the money for the tickets. And I was like, game on. And I was like, what, seven? And fun fact, the only reason I wanted to go to the Beach Boys concert is because of Full House, not to date myself.
• 7:44
  But like there's an episode where the Beach Boys came on and I was like, that's my first concert. It's got to be. Anyway, like I made like friendship bracelets and I would sell them on the beach and I would have like projections, you know, I studied abroad in Paris and I fell in love with these like little squishy things that they sold in, what are they? They're not piazzas in France. What are they? Ooh.
• 8:10
  I don't know. I don't know. But I know what you mean. There were like these squeezy little guys and I loved them and they were selling them for like 10 bucks a piece. And I was like, hey, like, can I, you know, and I made my own version with my own spin on it. And I sold them back at my elementary school in high school. My girlfriend and I cut up a bunch of Mavi jeans and made like three jean upcycled handbags.
• 8:36
  And it's like, if any of those things took off or my parents put me on Shark Tank, then maybe, you know what I mean? Like it was always in my blood. But this was the first time where I was like, I'm going to do this. And if I don't do it, someone else is going to do it. So like, let me run as fast as I can. What was the light bulb moment for this specific idea? Like how did this invention come to you? And how old were you at the time?
• 9:02
  I was 27. It was 2013. I was working in advertising. So, you know, back to my parents being creatives in the gig economy, I was like, I kind of saw what that life was like. Like, I wanted to use creativity to make money.
• 9:20
  And I was like, okay, advertising, like that's, that's the move. Like, I'm going to be great at this. I can pitch, I can sell. I'm artistic, I'm creative. Like let's, that's where creativity and money combines, you know, like that's business and creativity. So I started my career as a junior designer, rose the ranks as an art director, creative marketer. I worked on Olay and all
• 9:44
  I always say that when I worked on Midol and Aleve, that was like, I worked on Midol and Aleve at BBDO at the same time, and that's owned by Bayer. And then I worked on all the Wrigley brands at the same time. So Fivegum, Altoids, Orbit, right? And in that, you're selling fresh breath.
• 10:02
  right? It doesn't matter if it's a gum or a mint, but it's fresh breath. But you look at Five Gum, and that's the 13-year-old boys with like explosions and black and neon, right? And then you look at Orbit, and it's like Wes Anderson inspired. Those were the references. And it was everything from the strategies to the positioning to who we were speaking to. And then on the flip side, Bear, Might All on a Leave, uh,
• 10:26
  Hydal is like basically the same formulation plus caffeine, right? One is for cramps, for menstrual cramps for teenagers. The other is for old guys and arthritis, right? But it's almost fundamentally the same formulation from the same parent company. So that was so much of where I learned like what is a brand? What makes a brand tick? But I was working in advertising for about 10 years, eight-ish. And I was burning the candle at both ends. I was pitching.
• 10:56
  I was running away and like so much of that work took so much out of me. And there were nights where I slept at the office, like literally slept at the office, but I still needed to turn around for literally international beauty clients and look the part at the top of the room, selling them work that they needed to trust me for. Right. So...
• 11:21
  That was when I was like, my hair always needs to look good. But when do I have the time? And my mom being the hairdresser was like, well, you used to use shower cap when you're little, just get another shower cap. And I was like, no, you know?
• 11:36
  And I went to go look for one. And I always say that it's not that nothing came up, it was what did. So I'm married to a graphic designer. We've been together for 17 years now, but we were together for however long time we were cohabitating. So many of our purchasing decisions are guided by what great design is.
• 11:52
  What we define as great design. And I always say it doesn't need to be expensive. Like Ikea has those really fun shaped ice cube trays that are 99 cents on the bottom floor, right? That's great design. Like we don't have normal ice cube trays. We have big spherical rocks, we have hearts, we have stars and it's not expensive. Like great design doesn't need to be luxury. It just needs to be thoughtful, right? It just needs to be thought about.
• 12:19
  And my definition of that is when form and function are in unison. Right. And what I always say I saw when I searched for like fashionable shower cap, chic shower cap, etc.,
• 12:35
  It's not that nothing came up. It was what did. It was the bows. It was the ruffles. It was the sequins. It was like the crazy florets and the tacky prints and everything had that Miss Muffet shake. And I was like, this is someone's definition of what fashion is. So clearly there's a market, but it's not my definition or your definition or any of my friends definitions. Right. But what really cracked it open was fashion.
• 12:59
  everyone, A, there was no brand and I was a brand builder, right? There was no brand in the space. There was no brand talking to me the way that I wanted to be spoken to. There was no insight for why I needed the product to begin with, right? The only thing that people were even remotely talking about was style preservation. And I was like, style preservation, like that's so 50s, right? What does that even mean, style preservation? It means like protect your blowout in style.
• 13:29
  That's not what a shower cap is used for. Shower cap's used for the lazy girl that doesn't want to wash her hair after she's hung over from the party, you know? And that's when I really started mining for the why. And I was like, the why is the most interesting part because the behavior is universal. Yeah.
• 13:46
  But the whys are so far reaching, right? A busy mom is not washing her hair every day for a completely different reason than the young college girl who's hungover, right? The girl who's going from dance practice in high school to out with her friends is not washing her hair every day for a completely different reason than the young professional that I was.
• 14:06
  But the thing that we all had in common, regardless of age, gender, geographical location, household income, right, was the fact that we were skipping washes and there was nothing for us. And that's when I was like, ooh, huge tam. Like, no one's thinking about this. No one's going to be thinking about this. Like, I've got to go.
• 14:26
  I was like, I can't be the Romy and Michelle claiming that I invented the post-it. You know what I mean? Like it can't, that can't be me. Right. So what happens? You have this idea. It's 2013. You're working, you know, crazy hours. You've got a busy full-time career. What happens? You want to know what really happens? Yeah, definitely. I go to AIM. You remember? It's the messenger.
• 14:50
  Okay, yeah, yeah, right. And I literally, I'm a very popular person. My birthday is next week. There's like 40 people that are coming to my birthday dinner. Like it just, it's just like social butterfly, you know? And I pull people from all walks of my life and I never let go of them. Like that's just my MO. Like if you're in my pocket, you're in my pocket. You know, you're good to me, I'm good to you. Like I'm loyal to a fault. So I go on my AIM buddy list. This is like dating, dating me so hard. I'm 38, whatever.
• 15:20
  And I ask every random girl that's on. And it was like one girl from high school, one girl that I went to camp with, like musical theater camp with like 20 years ago, you know, like, and I just smattered and I asked them two questions. I said, hey, random question. No, we haven't spoken in a while. I hope this isn't like too much of an imposition. Hey, random question. First question was, do you wash your hair every day? Second question was, do you use a shower cap?
• 15:49
  And I just, I snapshotted like 20 of them. And it was the fact that no one was watching it every day. Customer research, love it. Yeah. And like, but for me, what I always say is like, you don't need a focus group. You just need an indication. And then what you need is your gut. Because if you focus too much on the data or too much on the indication, like you're not treating yourself as what you need to be, which is a litmus test.
• 16:16
  Like that's your earliest, earliest training and instinct for your business. And that needs to be honed like a ninja skill. Like you need to be an insight assassin in order to guide anything to any millions, you know? So I asked enough people to know that it was worth the next step, which is me calling a patent attorney and being like,
• 16:37
  how do I get a patent? Like I didn't want to leave. I had a very lucrative career. I was very fortunate. I worked my ass off for it, but it wasn't a career that I was trying to jump out of, you know, and I wanted to evaluate if it was something that I could really do. But in advertising, intellectual property is everything.
• 16:56
  So like, not only were my parents making money from the ideas and the concepts in their hands and their work, right? My husband was, and I had built my career that way too. Like in advertising, like you're the nucleus. Everything revolves around the creatives. Like they stimulate you, they feed you, they give you off days after you're burnt out. Like everything, you're the lifeblood of what is being sold, you know?
• 17:22
  So I was like, I'm not going to leave just to launch a random company. Like, I'm only going to leave if I can own this space. So I knew that I wanted to, like, create something that was absolutely mine. And so in that early phase when, you know, you're coming up with the patent and you're speaking to these people, was there no patent for, like, shower caps at all at that time? Or there was a fully different twist there?
• 17:50
  Yeah, so my intention is new and novel. We have seven patents. So there's three different types of patents. There might even be four, but the ones that I have are design and utility. So feel free to tell me everything as if I'm five because I love it in all the easy language. Oh my God. So I don't have a before and after, but we can all close our eyes and say, I know what a shower cap used to look like.
• 18:17
  If you've ever seen a shower cap with pleats on the front like this, they've probably gotten a letter from us or they will in the next year or two. We created the category of waterproof turban shower caps, especially the ones with a radial pleat. We were also the first to remove that Miss Ruffet shape and do a streak band. But mainly the category was broken out in...
• 18:38
  plastic with like terry cloth on the inside, so a dual layer, or a plastic coated outer with a layer on the inside. We were the first to bring an active wear nanotechnology to the headwear space. And then we're also known for this gripper on the inside, which was first market. We encase our elastic in the waterproof fabric so it doesn't erode.
• 19:02
  And it's breathable. So a lot of the plastic shower caps on the market actually create frizz, the irony, right? Because they're not breathable. Your hair is trapped with your hot head and your hot shower. So if you notice on a plastic shower cap, often you'll come out and your hair will be more frizzy. Mine is actually one way breathable because it pulls from the same technologies that like sweat wicking does in active wear performance wear.
• 19:26
  Wow, cool. That's amazing. Yeah, my like my when I think of a shower cap, I think of like the plastic with the what did you call it the miss? Yeah.
• 19:37
  Miss Muffet shape. The Miss Muffet shape. Yeah, exactly that. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Amazing. And then, wait, hold on. There's more. There's more. The other ironic thing, and this is where, like, you know, my background really does come to play into what I brought to market because I was able to listen to customers and what they actually wanted, right? Or consumers, I guess. They weren't customers yet, but they all became customers.
• 20:02
  This actually hangs. So a lot of my customer base is BIPOC women, right? Or women with big, unruly, unmanageable hair, because those are the women that have the least time to do it because it takes the longest. It's the hardest, right? So the irony is like hair like mine is quite heavy. So a cheap, flimsy shower cap, your hair drops out of the bottom.
• 20:25
  So if you've ever had your hair down and you're worrying about if it's going to fall out in those cheap ones from the hotel, what we actually did with this back pocket, which is also in the design and the utility, but it hooks underneath. So if you have braids or really heavy hair, it almost holds gear while this hooks under as opposed to what would just pop up. So we thought of everything. And when I say we, it was me.
• 20:55
  Back in the early days, there was no we. But did you like make like a prototype at that time? Or were you kind of like going to a factory and being like, here's the vision? Like what did that R&D kind of phase look like and product development?
• 21:10
  Yeah. So I always say I, you know, New York City, I'm a New York City girl. I knew how to navigate the city. But New York City is my co-founder. Right. Because I was able to use the garment district and go back and forth into the sample rooms in what would typically be something that I would need to travel to or invest in R&D with a prototype studio and lose control over development.
• 21:34
  The reality was that I had the skills to make the thing, right? And because we were functioning like a fashion item, I could go and iterate these prototypes in these sample rooms and they were charging me like 35 bucks a pop.
• 21:47
  Oh, wow. Amazing. Like nothing. Nothing. So I was just like burning through revisions and I would sit there and I would like tweak things and I would pin things and I would carve things down. And then there were times where I would like take a freelance job in advertising because I left Saatchi basically when I had the idea. I stayed for a little bit longer and was like, I'm going to go.
• 22:09
  And that's the other thing about New York and advertising is like, if you build enough of a network that becomes your safety net. So I was really fortunate in that. Like I had enough of a career that like, if it really didn't work out at launch, right. I, I could get a job somewhere. Like I could call a recruiter. And even if it was an account, I wasn't happy to be working on. Like I would be there, but also now someone who's on my board and I want to shout her out because she's honestly an icon and,
• 22:36
  Megan Skelly, she was my creative director at one of my freelance jobs. And it honestly was a dream job. It was like an associate creative director role. And it was like on Clinique, working underneath her. And I was in the final stages. I had a prototype and I was like ready to go shoot the lookbook. And she was just like, I know you have to go do this now. This is the timing of your life. But trust that wherever I am, you'll always have a place with me.
• 23:05
  Oh. And I was just like, like, I still think about that conversation. Like when I invited her to the board, she's been on the board for the past two years. Like when I invited her, that was why. I was like, we're circling back in our lives again because I'm in this next generation of this brand. And you effectively allowed me the comfort to know that I could. Yeah. It gave you the confidence to be able to go out and know that you had a safety net.
• 23:34
  Yeah, truly. But also what that allowed me to do is really spend time in development and build it right. You know, I didn't waver. I like, I wasn't rushing to market. I was like, no one knows this is coming. Right. So it has to be good. And if no one knows it's coming, but I'm so eager, right. Like what's driving the timing. And, um,
• 23:58
  It was just how eager I was. How long did it take to kind of get you, I guess you launched in 2015, right? So circa two years of. It was like two and a half years of development. And during that time, you know, during the manufacturing process and kind of that development process, I was reading an article where you were talking about.
• 24:17
  that time you were kind of, and probably still to this day, you know, you negotiated every single step, every single kind of price point, every single down to the labels and the thread and the, you know, all the materials, all this kind of stuff. How important do you think negotiation is as a skill in business? And how did you kind of have the confidence to go and do that and ask for these things? Because I know that, you know, some people, it can really come naturally to kind of
• 24:44
  haggle on something or haggle on the price. And for some people, it can be really a tough, you know, hurdle to go over and flex that muscle. It's a great question because it's also quite cultural, right? Like every country has a different perspective on it. Some people get offended. Other people, like you can travel and it's an expectation. You don't accept the first price that's on the ticket.
• 25:04
  So I just want to address that. But like, I'm a New Yorker, born and raised, and I had absolutely no problem going in and saying what I needed. But it was also very much my own money. You know, I think if you're playing with a couple million dollars in a seed round, like maybe you're not as price conscious. Maybe you're not willing to go to the Mac for something. But yeah.
• 25:24
  I can tell you that what you negotiate is what you're locked into until your scale allows you to negotiate harder. And sometimes that's a pretty far threshold. So you should really, really, really look at that first price on any touch point as the price that you're going to inherit for a while.
• 25:41
  So think of it like it's like the opposite of a salary negotiation. So hot tip, ladies, if you're still in a full time job, always tell somebody that's calling you that your salary is 30K higher. Whenever someone's like, where are you at now? 30K higher, 30K higher. No one knows. No one's ever going to know. It's never going to matter. And if you say it with confidence, that's your starting bar at that new place, right? It's what they start the conversation at.
• 26:08
  I have this video. Do you know Mesa Chahada from Behave Candy? She made this amazing video on TikTok just telling a story that happened to her. She was living in America. I think she was in New York even, and she was getting paid $100,000 as like a brand manager or something like that.
• 26:26
  And she was having a conversation with a girlfriend of hers. And that girlfriend who had a really similar title and a similar job was like, oh, I'm on 200 grand. And she was like, wait, what? Like, I thought I was on a good salary, but you're on double what I'm on. And basically, even though she was in like a really, she was in like what she considered kind of like a dream job. She loved it. She loved working there. She was really, really happy.
• 26:46
  But that kind of like seed planted in her mind. And so then the next time someone reached out on LinkedIn to kind of like ask her if she was interested in looking at this role, et cetera, et cetera, which happens all the time, you know, she was like, yeah, I'm interested, even though she wasn't. And she was like, but my salary expectation is 200. And she just like automatically doubled it and had nothing to lose and was already happy in her job. And they were like, yeah, great. Amazing. That sounds good. And she ended up
• 27:11
  actually getting that job and moving from her kind of job that she loved to this new job, doubled her salary. And I'm like, that is so amazing. And it's so important to have transparent conversations around pay. This is like, you know, and yeah, asking for like a significant increase, not the 5k bump kind of thing. Yeah. 5k bumps are useless. You can get one whenever you want, whenever you want. If they don't hate you, they'll give it to you. There's never a reason why a company large or small cannot give you a 5k to retain.
• 27:41
  Right. But like, I love that story. And also I want to shout out my girlfriends. They founded Ladies Get Paid. Do you know that organization? No, I don't know that. It's incredible. It's literally the entire ethos is bridging the wage gap. She wrote an incredible book called Ladies Get Paid, Claire Wasserman. They just had two beautiful, beautiful kids. So we will link it in the show notes. So anyone who wants to check it out, including myself can have a look. Yeah,
• 28:11
  Okay. So you go through R&D. How much did you invest, by the way, to get like, you know, your personal kind of cash to get you to launch? Yeah, it was rolling, but what I had allocated was 10,000. And then there was like 200 here, 300 here, but like effectively 10 got me to a functioning proto.
• 28:34
  And then enough kind of interest to be able to utilize what came free. My dad owns a set design company. So our first photo shoot, he was taking my art direction and building like our backdrops and stuff. There's like really cute pictures of me like pointing. Oh, I love that. Yeah, it's all in the fam.
• 28:54
  So on that level, I don't have a trust fund like so many founders do, but I did have a lot of free creative resources, I will say, in my own self-set and also kind of tier A, what other people hire on the outside.
• 29:10
  And so for launch, I want to talk about like kind of like the launch moment and that kind of how many units do you have? Like what was the MOQ back then to getting started? There was no MOQ, but I ordered 980. Okay. And I will say my husband is like my number one supporter. We're best friends. Like I said, we've been together for 17 years, but I will never forget, ever forget, ever forget, or, and I will never let him forget.
• 29:37
  The fact that he was running Powerade and they did some like branded sponsorship thing with like some major basketball player on like this merch drop. And I had ordered 980 shower caps. 20 were like samples that I had sent out to press or whatever. I was like pulling them for friends and some testing. But I ordered 980 shower caps for pre-order. And they were just like sitting in boxes in my house, like waiting for,
• 30:03
  And I was reading Girlboss because I left, I left Saatchi literally, I think the month that Girlboss came out. So when I left my job, that was like my beach read for our summer vacation after I had left the job. And we're sitting on the beach and I was like, I was like, I'm so excited to launch. I'm like literally reading Girlboss, like how cliche. Yeah.
• 30:23
  And I mean, spark the revolution. And he goes, well, he's like, you know, 980, like, you know, it might be a lot, like, even for Powerade, even for Powerade. And I was like, and he's like, and we had millions in an ad buy. And I was like, this is off brand for you. Also, watch me. The fuel. You're like, this is the fuel I need. We sold $15,000 in the first 10 days.
• 30:49
  Because Fast Company picked it up the day after the site went live. So if I didn't have that 980, I would have been shit out of luck.
• 30:55
  Wow. Okay. So basically the launch was the fact that you had Fast Company. I think I read about that actually. The Fast Company article came out, which then eventually led to Bloomingdale's, but that was like a launch moment. And how did the Fast Company article happen? Like, did you pitch them or did it just, they just, how did they know about you? Yeah. So our launch, our launch and the virality around it is like, looking back is
• 31:23
  It's honestly probably like one of my favorite memories because I'm big on energy and manifestation. I don't know if you know, do you know the Bevel article with Tristan Walker and the razors? No. He reinvented the razor for Black men and he created an ergonomic that's better for coarse hair that prevents razor bumps. And then he had this big P&G acquisition and now he runs their entire T&I program like...
• 31:52
  for product design. It's like, it's a great, great case study. But that, his Fast Company article was like reinventing the razor for the modern man or something like that. And it had his sketches from R&D. And I was like, on the hard days, like that's, that was the thing. And I
• 32:12
  I had a professional photo shoot because the couple of thousand dollars, I think it was like $3,000. I invested in a photographer that I respected. Taylor Lachey, who now has like a million followers on Instagram, had like 75,000 followers at the time. So she was our first model. And honestly, she's such an icon. I like, I love her. She's so hot and amazing and stylish. Everybody follow her.
• 32:38
  But I lined up a couple of really right things. So I always say it looks like we had 2 million in the seed round when I had literally like me had a laptop at a coffee shop, like and my freelancer day rate being like, how far is this going to get me, you know. But we looked the part like the site was incredible. I launched it on Squarespace Commerce. Like we were on Squarespace for probably like way too long. I wrote Squarespace all the way through COVID.
• 33:04
  No way. Oh, wow. I was like, I learned year three from someone that works at Squarespace because they used to tap me for marketing stuff all the time. I probably shouldn't even say this, but who cares? She was like, you know, you're like the top three commerce brand. And I was only doing like a couple million at the time. And I was like, I should not be the top three commerce brands. Like I gotta get off this platform. You're like, yeah, this platform isn't built for me. That's not a good thing. Like do not tell me that.
• 33:32
  You're not telling me that. So we looked the part, but in advertising, again, back to advertising, like, they always say, like, how good can your idea be? They teach you this in school. Like, write your press release. If you're pitching a campaign, you need to know what the headline is, because otherwise it's not big enough. What's the hook? Yeah. It's like a pressure test for, like, if you're thinking big enough, you know?
• 33:56
  So I was like, I can write my own press release. And then I had a couple of friends in media that like let some names fall off the truck, you know, and I had curated like bylines. That's a really good tip for anyone starting out. Go to who's writing about the things that you do, right? So the articles that you read that are in your RSS feeds that you find that people send to you, like take all of those names, follow them on Instagram, build your rapport, because
• 34:26
  So I did that for a little bit. And then this is a really great story. I sent the press release to Fast Company, the only contact that I had.
• 34:37
  And I got their out of office response. And it was like, if this is an emergency, contact XYZ. Because she was on mat leave. And I was like, well, it's an emergency to me. And I just took the email. And I emailed that other person. And I was like, hey, I was like, we just launched. Want to talk? They wrote me back right away.
• 34:57
  And then they were like, we want this. Can you talk tomorrow? What was the headline? Do you remember? Like the subject line? Of course, reinventing the shower cap for the modern woman. That was their headline. My subject line was not your grandma's shower cap. Also love. Amazing. So we always like the joke in our house or in our family is like, they're a real fast company because we had blasted it to a bunch of people. And they literally were like,
• 35:26
  We want this. They were fast. Love it. We were on Not Caught first. And then to be honest, I knew that I had a hit because I had put it, I had put the pre-order on my own personal Facebook and Instagram before the Fast Company article came out. So we launched on August 15th and I was like, hey, we're live on IG and on Facebook. I saw Eva Chen at Fashion Week a couple of weeks, not a couple of weeks ago, a couple of years ago.
• 35:53
  And she introduced me to someone as one of the first case studies to launch on Instagram. And I was like, that's so cool that they know me that way. Because it was 2015, you know, and it is how I dropped it.
• 36:04
  So we launched on Meta, and this is before Meta acquired, before Meta was Meta. I put it on my Facebook to my own followers. And then I put it on Instagram, and the order started coming in. And I was selling a $43 shower cap. So I was selling hundreds of this invention in the pre-order before Fast Company hit. And Fast Company hit like two days later, and then it was just like...
• 36:30
  Yeah, it's like you really were able to find product market fit immediately because...
• 36:36
  It was there, you put it out, immediate sales. So in those first couple of years, what was the main kind of like, what was your, you know, when you're a solo founder and there's so much advice out there and so many different things that you should be pursuing and so many different channels and retail and wholesale and PR and influencers and organic content and ads and blah. What were you kind of focusing on? Like what was the channel that continually just like worked for you that you were like consistently like doubling down on? I played with Meta really early.
• 37:04
  Like I understood audience strategy because of my background. So I remember like going into the dry bar audiences and just like testing some things with age bands.
• 37:15
  It's not a game I would play now. It's a very different, different game. And to be honest, I can empathize with anyone who's launching today because even I get overwhelmed, you know, and not only was it my background, but like I have so much experience, like the expectation for founder content and also brand content on all the channels and the social selling and the TikTok shops and the this and the that and the da-da-da-da-da-da.
• 37:38
  My best advice is to focus on the brand. That's what I did, is I focused on the brand, what I wanted the brand to mean, what I wanted the brand to say, what I wanted the brand to do. And the way that we were the most efficient in managing all of it was the calendars kind of...
• 37:54
  like they extrapolated from each other. Like we've always been a really small team as successful as we've been. And especially creatively because I over indexed there. So I always invest in ops and back office and like my creative teams are pretty lean. And it's like one calendar, one theme.
• 38:18
  And then you just modify per channel, right? And you can do that with a resizing, but you can also do that by taking the same concept, the same relevant concept and like twisting it slightly because it'll play better on TikTok if it's hacks.
• 38:32
  And I think the other thing that I did that I've heard that, you know, because I mentor and mentee a lot of different people at this point. Like if you're a female innovator, slide into my DMs like I hold time. I think it's really important. There aren't a lot of people that like go out of their way to help people starting out. But my line, and I hope that anyone listening respects this, is like you have to actually be doing something different.
• 38:56
  Like I'm not here to consult on a white t-shirt company. Like that's not interesting to me. I have to get excited. I have to think that it's something that's new and different in market that deserves to exist. Anyway, slide into my teeth. What's the innovation? Exactly. Like true innovation. What's the unique point of difference? Yeah. Or even if you say like, I think there's something here that can be innovative. Like I'm down to talk about that too. You just have to respect the fact to want to do something new and different.
• 39:24
  And also on that same point, like, I also don't think that anybody should be launching anything if it's not new and different because it's way too hard. Like, this journey is way too hard. Like, you have to be selling something that people actually want. Oh, this is what it is. It's important. I never had a problem gifting. Ever. Because...
• 39:48
  I knew and I had confidence in my products and it was new and novel and I knew it was buzzy and weird enough and sticky enough that if I got it to one person, then the word of mouth would support it. Right. So like I've heard from a lot, a lot of founders, like, do you gift?
• 40:06
  You know, and it's like, yeah, fucking gift. Give your shit to everyone. Like everyone building into your model, working out with the factory. Like, you know, if you were to say like, let's say you have a thousand units, what percentage would you gift? Like what's a good kind of like formula to follow?
• 40:23
  I think this is what I would do. I would allocate 100 just because it's an easy number to model. And I would track everyone that you give it to. And I would follow up with a survey. And I would ask in the survey if they told anyone about it. And then I would ask in that same survey if they would be willing to tell anyone about it. And then I would track actually who did tell someone about it.
• 40:48
  right? And it's that proportion that then would guide what you can support or continue to support or what you would be willing to kind of do again. But I think a 10% ratio of whatever you're producing is pretty good. And then I'll name drop another that I think is great. Minisocial is a really great platform. They basically scale casting for micro-influencers.
• 41:14
  So if you do have 50 to allocate, then you can write a brief and they'll cash to your people. But I think in the earliest days, before you reach that scale, like if you're actually, again, creating something new and different, you can slide into people's DMs. Like we've not paid a lot of influencers because I don't have to fight with another jean company to get my jeans on her.
• 41:37
  Totally. You know, so like when you actually create the time and development to create something that's spearheading a category, it's harder. There's so many ways that it's harder and we'll talk about some of them. But like fundamentally, it's this beautiful experience of like people really appreciating what you're giving them, you know, willing to wait for it, willing to pay more for it. When they get it, they'll tell people easier because they feel like you put them on to something and now they want to share it.
• 42:07
  So many CPG brands out there don't have that type of virality because it's not baked into their wine, you know?
• 42:14
  A hundred percent, a hundred percent. So I want to talk about some of those harder things that you mentioned, but just before we kind of get to that and like the current situation that you're in now and this kind of topic that I want to get to, I know that like retail has been a big kind of pivotal thing for you in the journey. And, you know, it started with that like fast company article that led to Bloomingdale's and this chance encounter. And yeah, I want to kind of like touch on the retail part of your business. Yeah.
• 42:44
  So we were very fortunate. I've never been afraid of a lot of things, but I've very much in my business journey, never been afraid of two things. And I think it was because I didn't know that I should be afraid, but I'm just passing it along to everyone. We've always been an omni-channel business. We launched online to get the traction and the buzz, but when the retailers started calling, like I was like, I'm ready, like give me the shelves. Like, let's go.
• 43:10
  I think a lot of entrepreneurs get scared of retail or they read things that make them feel like they need to feel scared of retail. The reality is, especially now, the buyers are really excited to discover new things. So again, the value of doing something new and different.
• 43:26
  But our first retailer interest was Bloomingdale's. And that was because the SVP of Bloomingdale's was one of my earliest customers in pre-order. So that's another really good tip is like when you launch, if you have any, any blip of success, read every single person that comes in. Because especially if you're like in a Sydney or a New York City or a Toronto, you're
• 43:50
  The people that learn about it early are typically tastemakers, right? So they're either really well-connected and can, like, throw money at things that, like, they want to experience or they're in the know, right? So that means that those earliest adopters, they're not just your biggest fans and your loyalists. Like, they're the ones.
• 44:08
  Totally. I actually, when I had my jewelry brand, I also used to do that. I used to look at, I mean, every single customer because I was obsessed with knowing who was like wearing my stuff, right? And who was sparkling really bright. And one of the orders that came through, it was sent to her office at Refinery29. So of course, I like looked her up on Instagram, reached out, and it ended up getting...
• 44:29
  a feature in Refinery29, which maybe it wouldn't have before. It was like she was ordering it just personally, but it's so important to know who is buying, who are your customers? Like, what do they do? That's my same story for Anne Keating, who's the SVP of philanthropy at Bloomingdale's. I was just like, that's a signature. That's a woman I need to know. So I pulled her cap out of the pre-order because she was opening a store in Hawaii and I messaged it to her with a handwritten note. And she's been charmed ever since.
• 44:59
  Like, she literally told me the other day, she like, she knows Bill Lauder, like of Estee Lauder. Like, she calls him Bill and it's William. Oh my God. Wow. That's an icon. She like gifted Katie Couric, you know? So anyway, read your earliest. Bloomingdale's was our first interest, but inbound was Violet Gray, which is like, now that I'm in beauty, like, God, those shelves are hard to get onto.
• 45:28
  You know, like I meet people that are doing like, like 10 figures of business that are like, Violet Gray won't write me back. And I'm like, I don't know what to tell you. Like they'll write you back when they love it. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Love that for you. But they were, they were our first. And then we finally got packaging because we used to ship in, oh, this is our new little Mother's Day. So cute.
• 45:54
  So cute. Just first sneak peek. Sneak peek. And yeah, so we pitched Sephora as soon as we had packaging. And that's what we did was it was me and my VP of operations at the time. And we were like, let's go. Let's just shoot our shots.
• 46:10
  So we found an email on LinkedIn and we emailed her our gorgeous imagery, a couple of the press pieces that we had gotten. And she was like, congratulations. This is great. I work in color, but I'm sending you to the hair merchants.
• 46:25
  So she wasn't the right department, right? But we kind of like got in within the Sephora ecosystem and then she was impressed. So she internally sent it to hair and then they were coming for market and we pitched them and they bought it in the room. And we were in Sephora. Yeah, we were in Sephora by year one and we were in 70 locations by year two. That is crazy. Wow, gosh.
• 46:55
  I think it was like 72 hours on Sephora.com. Holy shit. That's amazing. Whoa. But I'm new channel and international. Never been afraid of retailers and I've never been afraid of like a global presence. Totally. Totally.
• 47:10
  So shifting gears a little bit based on the video that I saw on your Instagram, which led to this whole podcast, you're currently going through like an ongoing multi-year crazy legal battle around your intellectual property, your IP.
• 47:30
  And I know that other people listening have probably either gone through this themselves or are starting to experience this kind of thing popping up for them in business, especially when you invent something and you create something that's totally, totally unique and new. And I wanted to know kind of what's going on for you and what advice you have for small business owners who are kind of starting to experience the same issues. Yeah. Well, I'm not a lawyer, so I can't give legal advice.
• 47:59
  I can give business advice from my own experience. I feel like I've learned a lot. I think the best advice that I can give any entrepreneur is the only people who really knock off products are the ones that don't know how to build brands. I think that's a consistent theme that I can pass along and
• 48:21
  Because of that, building a brand and building the special original thing is where all of your time and attention should be. You can create a hit product and still might not get off the ground if you don't know brand, right? And if I didn't have a great brand, we wouldn't have had the velocity for anyone to come back and follow in our footsteps, if you will.
• 48:45
  But it is really hard to knock off a brand, especially because of the way that we broke it down earlier in the podcast. It's like all of those little decisions. So that's my best advice is like focus on the thing that no one can take and no one can send a picture of to China and try to send back to, you know, the American people like build something that doesn't feel like it's easy to knock off.
• 49:11
  And that's the intangible feeling that a business creates and a company creates and a brand creates. The product is one thing, but it's everything around it that's harder to photocopy. Yeah, it's your magic. It's the magic that you've brought into something with that love and energy and time and unique point of view. Yeah. And I think because of that also, you know,
• 49:38
  The other thing that I'd say is just know who you're up against. I think what I've experienced is that there's a lot of ethical companies that really did walk into it by accident, you know, that acquired something and then that was already in progress. And then they're like, oh my gosh, oh my God, I'm so sorry. What can I do to make it up to you guys? You know, like we're so deeply apologetic. But then there's another subset of people that,
• 50:05
  do this type of work for a living and have built their business models off of this. And I think that if you look on someone's website and you can see other people's products referenced, that's a pretty good indicator that they knew what was up and they knew what was coming. And they've probably modeled the ROI, right? On how much to invest in order to hurt you and what it would be worth if they could get XYZ. And those are the people that you want to stay away from.
• 50:35
  Totally. You know, there's no real winning. I was talking to a friend of mine who she's invented products. She's, she's gone through similar kinds of things, but as a small business, she was kind of saying, you know, how do you afford to fight a legal battle? And like, what I wanted to know is from your perspective, obviously you've built this huge brand. It's,
• 50:56
  you know, 10 years in the making, it's successful. When you're thinking about someone who is in the earlier stages and, you know, who hasn't necessarily raised money yet, doesn't have crazy money in the bank, would you say it's worth pursuing and investing or it's worth working away from? Like, what do you do when it's like, you know, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to go against people with deep pockets? Well, I think the thing is, is you never know.
• 51:26
  Right. And COVID is a perfect example. Like I thought I knew our opponent and then I started hearing that they're circling up angel checks as of last year. You know, like that's not indicative of what I thought I was up against. The, the,
• 51:44
  Business changes for everyone. So I think you have to have strategies and methodologies about what's worth it for your market position to invest in, right? Who and how do you consider a competitor, right? Like those are all things that are up to the business owner. I think that the best thing that you can do, especially in the early days, if you're selling something different is invest in your IP.
• 52:11
  How you invest in enforcing it is a different conversation, case by case basis. I'm not the one to advise. Got it. You know? Yeah. But I think having something to be able to enforce against, if you actually have built something and created something different, otherwise you don't have a chance once someone tries to steal what you built. Right? My seven patents and my multi-million dollar revenue and my global distribution and my incredible retailers,
• 52:41
  All that really got me is the right to fight the first ones that actually really wanted to try. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So it's like, I'm figuring out how I feel about all of this, but I do know that I never regretted investing and having it in the first place. Mm. Yeah.
• 53:01
  Totally. Goodness. Goodness me. How do you, as a quick side question here, the mental health aspect, how do you deal with just like, like for me, if something shitty happens or like whatever, I get that, you know, the internal kind of like, oh, but the injustice of it, you know, and that mental anguish and struggle and the pain that comes from this kind of stuff.
• 53:29
  How do you deal with this? Like, what's your strategy for coping? Or like, what have you kind of done over the last couple of years? It's a really good question and I want to give it the right response. It's ebbed and it's flowed. The times where I'm most frustrated is where I feel like the system is not working in service of American citizens. And that's been frequent.
• 53:59
  I was really, really struggling before I posted that Instagram picture or the Instagram video. And so much of that is because I'm not a person that has ever really been victimized. I was lucky to kind of grow up popular, popular enough, you know, it's like other popular girls were mad at me and that was my bullying, like fine, whatever. But very blessed that like being
• 54:30
  But I was sexually assaulted. And like, it's that level of violation that I would compare it to. And when that male COO put his hands around me in federal trial, like I was re-traumatized. Because he did it from behind and felt entitled to put his hands anywhere near my body. And I didn't feel protected. You know?
• 55:00
  harassing me and trying to dismantle my company and my assets and has like made me something other than a human female woman under the age of 40 in his eyes, you know? And so to answer your question, I like, I increased my therapy. I, I was very, very, very lucky to have...
• 55:29
  a lot of really high-powered people come out of the woodwork and say, we see this, we see how wrong it is, and we're here to support you because you're the original. So reaching out to my network, amplifying my network, feeling more empowered to be vocal. I also, after the trial, I was invited to speak at the USPTO, the US Patent and Tripmark Office,
• 55:56
  there was a conference called the US Inventors Conference, and I was invited to keynote. And that was something that I almost didn't do. And I was like, no, you know what? Like the other side of this is actually going to be really empowering. And it was to stand in that office beside a podium and,
• 56:21
  in a room full of adventures that like all had their own war stories because this happened so much, you know? So it's, I'm figuring it out by the day. I'm really focused on my own self-care, but ultimately I've just been repeating the mantra that this is only happening because I'm so popular and special. Like, it's like the only thing that gets me through. It was like, there would be nothing to steal unless what we were doing was so bad.
• 56:51
  So above and beyond, you know, what they were capable of doing without me having spent three years in development doing it for them. You know? Totally. And like, we'll always win. You know, like we win by winning. Like if we're the true innovators, we're always going to be innovating. Totally. Which means that we'll always be like a couple miles behind. I can see it in our pipeline too. Like things that I've posted on social that they thought were other things and they just launched them. Like...
• 57:20
  Like they thought like a scalp scrubber was a hard soap, it seems. You know, it's like, it's just like they've been shopping in my laundry for four years. And it's just like, I would never do that with another company. Yeah. But I'm the one that can sleep at night. You know what I mean? Totally. Totally. You're the one who can, yeah, be so proud of what you've built and what you've done and the integrity that you have in your business. And yeah, gosh. Yeah.
• 57:54
  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.
• 58:18
  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.
• 58:41
  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.