Latest / The Growth Class with Phil Masiello / Wholesale Growth: Scaling a Fragrance Brand to 500 Retailers with Ricky Tiscareno

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Wholesale Growth: Scaling a Fragrance Brand to 500 Retailers with Ricky Tiscareno · The Growth Class with Phil Masiello

• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everybody, and welcome back to the Growth Class.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Phil Massiello, and today we're getting a little cozy.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: So excited to be joined by Ricky Toscarino, the founder of Poured Candle Bar.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: If you're ever wondered about the artistry behind fragrance or how to build a unique experience around candle pouring, you're in the right place.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, Ricky, welcome to the show.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to have you here.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for taking the time to come on and tell your story.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we'd love to hear your story.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: So why don't you take us back a little bit, give us a little flavor of who you are and where you've come from and then where you are today.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me, Phil.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a very interesting background.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've lived many lives career-wise.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: I started out in my early 20s as a professional dancer, did that in New York City, toured around the country, worked on cruise ships, turned 30 and realized that career is short and I needed to find something else to do.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I landed in tech randomly, worked for a startup called fab.com.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: I started in customer service there, quickly moved into operations, and then kind of fell into this trajectory of HR recruiting.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: So worked for a couple of startups in that world.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Along the way, met my husband Dennis, uh who worked in fashion wholesale for a Canadian company.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we lived our lives in New York City for like 15 years.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh along the way, we wanted to kind of dream and plan what a retirement might look like for us.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we moved to Hudson, bought a house in 2018.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um kind of had this pipe dream of retiring in our forties or fifties, having a little shop somewhere and uh living out our lives in the Hudson Valley.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Then the pandemic hit and the world changed.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and we had this idea of a retail space uh that we could do on nights and weekends.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And during the pandemic we were fortunate to work our day jobs, and so we were working remotely.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: We were building this plan in stealth mode, um and launched poured candle bar in Hudson.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's an old factory experience where you can come in and create your own products so you can make candles, perfumes, rediffusers.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: We're also a licensed wine bar, and uh so you can sip while you do that.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then the front half of our shop, we have a bit of a retail space.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we launched um and kind of grew organically during the pandemic.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people were coming up to the Hudson Valley, the numbers here were low, and um we kind of just hit it off.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Word of mouth happened, uh, and we were still operating nights and weekends, doing our day jobs, and then that started to scale to a point where Dennis had to step away from his career um to run it full-time.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then eventually a year into that, we got so busy that it was time for me to leave my career.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And about two years into that, um, we decided to really lean into his past in wholesale, and um we decided to launch our own fragrance line called Port New York.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're working on now.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Why okay, you you've got a a shop where you do the sort of the manufacturing experience for people, right?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: They can make their own candles and then you've got this wine bar.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: How did that whole thing, that whole idea, that thought process come together?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because that that just is it's just a bit unusual that you came from an artistic background, you came from a fashion background, and then all of a sudden you go into candles and fragrance with with a wine bar.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: So part of my journey in New York City as a performer, I had to have survival jobs.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I worked like every other dancer, actor, singer, had to be uh a waiter, worked for some great companies in the city, learned hospitality.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then also my family growing up owned two fast food restaurants.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of grew up in the service industry.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we knew that like Hudson was very special, great retailers, um, so great shopping, obviously a ton of antique stores, but it was missing this kind of experiential um feel, something to do outside of just shopping.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we decided that it was so unique that people would come to Hudson uh specifically for our store.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it became a bit of a destination.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that has continued to be the case since we launched in 2020.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: It yeah, I mean, it sounds great.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've not been there.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: I know Hudson um is sort of the Brooklyn of the Hudson Valley, but but that the concept of going in, creating your own candle or fragrance and a wine bar, I mean, it sounds interesting.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it just, you know, I think about whenever whenever I talk to entrepreneurs, I always think about how they put that together.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because usually you can see sort of a pattern from somebody's past and how they made that leap.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, it's interesting.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's really cool.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: So so now you've got, you still have the store, you're still doing that, but now you've created uh a fragrance company?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Called Port New York.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we launched under the label poured candle bar.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we were making our own fragrances that were really um inspired by the Hudson Valley when we first launched.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we had about six fragrances.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Each one had a story about Hudson and its history.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And when we went to market uh in kind of the wholesale channels, we realized it was hard to translate that across the country if we really wanted to scale.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it was also hard to kind of describe what poured candle bar is and what what a candle bar is in general.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we knew our fragrances were great.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: We had a lot of faith around that, but we knew we had to expand that.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so we decided to keep kind of the poured DNA.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Everything's hand poured, everything's made in small batches, um, everything's made in the US in in Hudson.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we launched poured New York.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we currently have about 40 different fragrances, uh seasonal, about 60 different skews.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we sell candles, uh, rediffusers.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: This year we launched a niche parfume line.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and each fragrance still has a story.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Our fragrances are unique to us.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: We've created them ourselves, and we've really tapped into Dennis's background in wholesale, uh, in product development.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's a really a transferable skill that he had from fashion, and he took to to the fragrance industry.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: So he's our nose.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: But we're not talking are we talking about body fragrance or are we talking about room fragrance?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: So great question.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: We started with a body and room spray.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: We called like an abode and body mist.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and this year we launched a per a true perfume line.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we have 13 fragrances currently that um are in our core collection that are perfumes.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: And and who's so so who's carrying that on the wholesale?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you're you're wholesaling it out to retailers.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: So who's correct?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: So who's carrying that?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Where could people go and check it out and buy it?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh aside from online, right?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: You can they can find them online at what?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Poor Candle Bar?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh under Poor New York.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's a separate website.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Separate website.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh we're in over 500 retailers across the U.S.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um mo mainly, uh mainly like boutiques um in the hospitality industry, fashion, gift, anthropology is carrying us.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you live in the city, in New York City, uh CO Bigelow's carrying us, Mertz Apothecary in Chicago on the West Coast, there's a lot of like really niche um grocery lines that are carrying us.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you can find us.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: So how'd you put that together?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because uh is there distribution or you're not shipping direct, are you?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Great question.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we have currently five showrooms we work with across the US.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I didn't realize there were showrooms for fragrance.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I know there's f there's showrooms for fashion.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Gift.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's a we just got back from Atlanta last week.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: We were at America Smart.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so there's probably like 40 different showrooms, um, and each one has a mixture of gift, fragrance, home.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of there's a lot of fragrance lines in there.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's um that's amazing.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's amazing.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's that's pretty uh over 500 stores pretty rapidly.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it you you said you started right at uh around COVID, so it's six years, and you've pretty much uh scaled it fairly fast.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we did it completely bootstrapped.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we don't have any backers, just Dennis and I and a small team.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um we really had this vision of like who were the top showrooms we wanted to work with uh in our in our space.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the last three years have really been pushing on the wholesale side.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's been amazing to see all the repeat customers we've had and then all the new business that's coming through their sales reps.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I'm sure it hasn't all been a rosy path.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there's been some uh obstacles along the way.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Has there ever been, of course.
• 10:43
  unknown: Yeah.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Has there ever been a moment where you thought, you know what?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't think this is gonna work out.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: There, yeah, I think we have a lot of those moments as entrepreneurs.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think one I can think of is during the last kind of like wave of tariffs.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like we buy our product overseas, um, like our raw material, our our soy wax and our fragrance oils are US made.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: So everything gets shipped to us.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we really had to balance like, do we raise our pricing?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're still so new.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: We really want to continue to build our moat uh and our distribution.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And um, we really toyed with or struggled with with whether or not we decide to raise our pricing.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we knew we were kind of like too young to do that.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's a ton of fragrances um brands on the market, and we kept kind of steering the ship.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we didn't raise any of our prices.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think that helped us open a lot of doors when a lot of other brands were raising their pricing.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I can think of like four or five times when things are stuck in customs, have nothing to do with us, they're just sitting there.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you usually it's Dennis waking up at like three in the morning, talking with our representatives overseas, trying to figure out where these things are.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh we can have all of our products made, but if our packaging isn't here, we're we're just sitting waiting.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's uh the um well, the tariffs are one thing.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: The ports are another issue because we have a lot of clients, uh especially during COVID, that really, really, really struggled because they would have product on the water and the ports closed and they couldn't get it off the water, and um they were expecting purchase orders from like major clients like Walmart and Target, and those purchase orders never came in, and really it it put a lot of people into a very, very difficult position.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: But the supply chain issues um have not really gone away.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they have in certain areas, but uh I we have one client.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the the product got to the port in uh this last round of product got to the port in New Jersey in February, and all it had to do was go from the port to uh uh Pennsylvania.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Got there in February.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: It did not get released for 40 days.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: 40 days it sat there.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you're sitting there going, and you're trying to get an answer, and all anybody can tell you is, well, these people stopped it to inspect it, and then they released it, but then it got on a truck, and then this group stopped it to inspect it, and you're going, My God.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just sorry to interrupt.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Have you seen this Spider-Man meme where they're all pointing at each other?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's basically what happens is no one wants to take ownership.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um the last time this happened to us, we actually found out that because our product was coming overseas, um, it was sitting in an area and a company got flagged, but our product happened to be one of the 40 or 50 brands that are sitting uh in that palette, and we just wait.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And we called every single day uh to the point of nausea and eventually got released um and we were able to deliver product.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but in those moments, you you know, you're proactive, you reached out to your retailers, most of the smaller boutiques understand like this is happening to everyone, especially now.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: So we ship what we can and then we kind of like backfill.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: The other problem we um we we we had a lot long-standing history in the shaving business.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: I I built a shaving brand and then we work with a lot of shaving companies, and and there's a lot of uh work being done in Mexico, which you would think that's great.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you just drive it across the border.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't tell you that I I would say that probably one out of every six loads coming across the border.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: And for a company that's the second largest shaver company in the world, that's a lot of loads.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: One out of every six or seven gets flagged.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the truck is filled with only their product, but you know, it triggers something.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And they want to you have to empty, they have to empty the entire truck.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Everything has to be checked because they're thinking that either the driver or somebody's putting drugs on the truck and they and they go through this whole thing.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it could take it could take a month to get the product released.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, you've got other trucks that just keep coming through.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's the most amazing thing, and you would think that technology today would be able to solve, you know, a lot of these problems.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think some of the things that happened with us, because we it was packaging we were waiting on, they were they were um prioritizing anything perishable.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: So they had to get that moving.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Boxes are like, eh, they'll get there when they can.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the problem with that for us is we're a seasonal business.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have a spring summer line, which is now our core, and then we have fall holiday.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: So if something's sitting in a truck for 40, 50, 60 days, we're missing that window to deliver that season, you know?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: We have a lot of clients that that do uh a lot of heavy selling on Amazon.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you come up on Prime Day, which is, you know, next week, and uh, you know, you have to you want to get your product in sometime in May.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so therefore you want it really on the water and floating with the delivery sometime in April.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it gets hung up.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: And if it's hung up for 60 days, you could miss Prime Day because you know there's certain things that Amazon won't let you do.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when it comes to holidays or busy times, you know, the they're not gonna everything slows down on the receiving side and you wind up missing it.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it and it's it's painful because then you brought in this product specifically for an occasion, whether it's a holiday or whether it's for prime day or whatever, and you miss the occasion, you're toast.
• 17:01
  unknown: Right.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: So let let's go back a bit.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: When you were you you you first started, you built the store, you're still working your your day jobs.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you're working at night and then you're working weekends.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: So you're working seven days a week, right?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: For months, yeah.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: For for months.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: During that time, any point in time during that that stretch where you thought, oh God, I don't know if we can I don't know if we can do this.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if we can make it out of this.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is a lot.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when we were just the candle bar and it was the two of us, and I we I think at that point we had maybe one part-time, like what we call a chandler, like um candlemaker.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um because we were so busy, it didn't feel like what a lot of people were feeling during the pandemic.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there were there were a lot of stores that closed in Hudson during that time.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: But then also there was like a cohort of us that launched new businesses during COVID.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it was this very strange feeling because you wanted to be proud of something that you were building, but you also didn't want to talk about it because you don't want any naysayers.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think when we were planning this, my husband, Dennis, and I we agreed that we can tell one person each out of ourselves and our family so that we had a place to like vet if we needed to.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: But we didn't want to hear all these people say, It's a global pandemic, what are you doing starting a business?
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: We wanted to just launch and go.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so by the time Dennis gave notice, we were like six months in and thriving.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um it wasn't until we really started to expand toward New York, where we had a lot of moving parts, um, and we were thinking of sec of a second location that little things started to break.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we got busier.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um and like the smallest because we were dealing with our own money, everything is a bet.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like I said, we don't have any backers, um, we couldn't play around with budgets here or there.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Had to be really thoughtful decisions.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that's when it got a little more stressful.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: It always gets stressful around money.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we um I think back one of my one of one of the actually the second business I ever built on my own.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: We we were in retail in Washington, D.C.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: and we had used our money and uh bought these two existing stores, transformed them into our concept, and then we built a third one, and the third store was sort of stretching it because it was expensive real estate.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: We overspent on uh not because of our fault, we overspent on the build-out because of delays.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Washington, D.C.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: is not exactly the best place to build retail.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, we wound up delayed for for a couple of months, and um and I can remember we we were strapped, strapped for money.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: And we had to make payroll, and of course, you know, we did what every good entrepreneur does.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: We maxed out our credit cards to make payroll.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: But we were uh but we we knew we needed to raise capital in order to continue to expand.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: And we had been in the works with this uh this uh uh private equity company, and so they knew exactly the position we were in.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: And we got a phone, we got a phone call.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: This is the one of the best stories of my life.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: We got a phone call from the guy uh that had the private equity group.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, you know, Phil, he said, I don't know if you realize, but you don't you guys don't have enough money in the bank because we were already deep in due diligence.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: You guys don't have enough money in the bank to make payroll this week.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: I said, No, I'm well aware.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Well, what are you gonna do?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I haven't figured that out yet, but I'll get it taken care of somehow.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: So he said, okay.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, he says, Dick, who is the CFO, he said he's gonna set he's gonna fax you over a letter because we don't want you guys going under while we're in in this.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: So he's gonna fax you over a letter, just sign it, and we're gonna send put some money in the in in your account to keep you guys going for a while.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the fax machine goes and this letter comes through, and it's literally one paragraph.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it basically says, We're gonna we're gonna lend you X dollars until closing, and then you'll pay that back out of closing.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that's pretty much what it said.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm looking at it going, and I'm looking for other paperwork to come through.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I and nothing's coming.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's literally one paragraph.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I I took off and I ran to our attorney's office, was like two blocks away, three blocks away.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Andrew, what what is this?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: What should I do?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Sign it and he looks at it, he reads it, he goes, Yeah, sign it.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: I said, but what happens if if if the whole thing falls apart and we don't pay it back?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: He says, It doesn't say.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: He said, So nothing happens.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Is it person am I personally guaranteeing it?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: He said, No, they just sign it.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I signed it and they did that.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, luckily the deal went through, but that was like one because I've never heard of another story where somebody's actually saved your ass with money when you really, really desperately needed it.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, it was uh money is always a tight one when you're scaling because you're you're reinvesting constantly and try, you know, you're buying equipment or you're buying supplies, you're hiring more people, you know, all the things you need to do to scale.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, all of a sudden you're looking and going, Man, we don't have enough money.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's been a challenge for us as a small brand competing against these large corporations.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, some of our competitors have been around for 50 plus years, and we're this new brand that happened to be on the same shelves as them.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I think a lot of retailers assume you're much bigger than you are.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we we now have a few employees, thankfully.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's not Dennis and I literally every day hand pouring everything, so we can scale our business.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I think it's this year, as we started to get into bigger stores, payment terms start coming in.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you have to really plan what a what a 30-day window is, what a 45 or 60-day window is, and how that impacts cash flow.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: So this has been a really great learning experience for us as we scale and and also like service our existing uh customers.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's another good point because when you once you st everybody wants to go into retail because they want mass distribution, but retail comes with a lot of a lot of things, a lot of moving parts that have to be managed, right?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because you've got everybody's got different payment terms, and you're you've got to have the product, you got the PO, you ship the product, you know, 60, 60 days out.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so your money is out, and then you send it, and you're waiting 30 days, sometimes 45 days, sometimes 60 days to get paid.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And we went into we we had a a beauty brand that we started, you know, with a woman in Carol Alt, and um and you know, we did quite well.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: We were on the shopping channels, and then we were on um online everywhere, and then we started to get into retail and we went into Alta.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Alta had called us, and and you know, we went in there and said, look, we'd love to be in here, but we don't pay slotting fees.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: We've we've built the brand, everybody knows us, so we don't have to pay for your marketing programs and things like that.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: We'll take care of the marketing on our own.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: And we had an agreement, everybody was fine.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the CEO was there, it was great.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'll two months after I get an email from the buyer saying, Hey, great, great news.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: Your slotting came in at$18,000 a skew, slotting fees,$18,000 a skew.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: We had 10 skews in there.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: I went, you gotta be kidding me.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I responded back.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: I said, This is our agreement.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: We don't pay slotting.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: I made that clear in the beginning, you know, and I had to get the CEO involved.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Ever since then, the buyer just had it out for us.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, anything she could do to make us miserable, she did.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, people don't realize that that all that has to be factored in, right?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're still paying a lot of people, and especially in the food side, you know, you're paying slotting fees.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: And when you pay that money, you know, you could it doesn't guarantee you a place.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: You could be gone any year.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then you've got, you know, all these deductions that people take because of broken merchandise or they didn't count something right, and you wind up having to put an accountant on on your business every day.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: But all that has to be factored in.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's very stressful, especially when you're self-funded.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we decided we could have gone one of two ways straight D to C, taking all of our money in marketing.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or we go what like was tried and true in terms of Dennis' background, which is like he grew up in the wholesale business.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: He scaled a fashion company, uh tr uh Kenyan fashion company.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we decided to go that route.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we haven't done a ton of marketing, so I think there's a real big upside for us once we start to like push on the D V C side.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it was really important for us to get in as many sources as possible, enter as many new markets as possible.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: And now I think we're at like a sixty percent reorder rate on wholesale.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's fantastic, man.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Not that's that's an unusual story because most people it's like the struggle, the struggle, the struggle.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you did you must be doing something right.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel like we're doing okay.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you're still smiling and you're still happy about it, so you're you must be doing okay.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a brand new industry.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've only been doing it the wholesale side.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still learning.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Every day I learn something new from dentists, from my team, from sales reps, uh, and it just keeps it keeps you on your toes.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely does.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: No, retail has has great upsides.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you uh again, you could build great brand recognition.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we liked what when we started the beauty business, we we did the shopping channels for that very reason.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're essentially trading margin for airtime.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: So you're on nationally with 200 million households looking at, you know, so so all of a sudden everybody, you know, knows who you are and and you can build your brand recognition that way, and then you start moving into retail and you know, but um, yeah, it's just uh a different model, but it's great.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, we're just about out of time.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for coming on.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Any uh last minutes, where can people reach you?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: The two you you have two websites.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: If they do want to buy, you do you do sell over them, right?
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Correct, yeah.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: So poured New York um is our fragrance house.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you can buy directly from us.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you're coming to the Hudson Valley and want to make your own products, poured candle bar uh is where you would make reservations.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then on our socials, it's poured candle bar and poured New York.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and we do have a lot of viewers for from New York.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, if you want to, it's a great trip up to Hudson, New York.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's beautiful, lovely, especially uh, you know, this time of year.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's all time of year except the maybe during snowstorms, but yeah.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Even that's beautiful, it's magical when Hudson during the snowstorms.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: It is, it is beautiful.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks again for coming on.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for taking the time.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, everybody out there, we will see you next time.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Bill.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.