Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / 6 Quick Questions with Michelle Hu, Founder of ETOILE (part 2)
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome back. Here are the six quick questions. So question number one is, what's your why? Why are you doing what you're doing?
- 0:18I think since we started back in 2016, I've always thought that, you know, there is no destination online or offline dedicated to making one's beauty routine more enjoyable. And I've experienced firsthand how amazing it feels to go kind of from something super chaotic to having everything organized with really good lighting. And we just want to bring this to everyone on a global scale.
- 0:41Not to mention I adore the space, so this doesn't feel like work to me. So, yeah, I just love what I do. Loving the day-to-day. Amazing. Yeah. It's what we all dream of. Question number two is what's been the top marketing moment in the business or number one marketing moment for you? It'd probably be what we spoke of before. It's those organic TikTok videos that just blow up and you literally see
- 1:11you know, sales and more so traffic absolutely skyrocket. 100%. Question number three is what's your go-to business resource when it comes to a book, a podcast or a newsletter? Business resource. I actually think it'd be Twitter.
- 1:31There are so many good kind of DTC founders on Twitter talking about absolutely everything. So before bed, every single night I'm scrolling through my Twitter feed. Any special recommendations you want to make? Anyone in particular?
- 1:45Social Savannah for kind of like TikTok content creation stuff. I love Jason Wong, who's the founder of Doe Lashes. There's so many. Nick Shackelford, Nick Sharma. All good ones. All good ones. I'm going to check them out if I'm not already following them. Question number four is how do you win the day? What's your AM and PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and motivated and successful? Yeah.
- 2:14I definitely love a good routine. I don't always stick to it, but I love going to the gym in the morning, making sure I get three meals a day, making sure I get enough sleep, and then just spending some time to kind of unwind and switch off from everything at well, which is usually very difficult. A hundred percent. And, like, it's so difficult to switch off your kind of brain and phone in the evening, like before bed. I think they say like an hour or two hours before bed, which –
- 2:42I find it so difficult, but I'm trying to flex that habit and like make it, you know, a rule, a house rule. Same here. Question number five, what is the worst money you've ever spent in the business and how much did it cost? Like a money mistake. Oh, money mistake. We spent a lot of money buying too much product. It was actually our travel cases just before the pandemic hit.
- 3:11And at that time, we already didn't do any kind of inventory forecasting or anything like that. It was simply just like my finger in the air approach. And I would kind of just guess how much we needed.
- 3:22And then coupled with that was the pandemic where everyone stopped traveling. So we were seriously overstocked in these travel cases and it took us a long time to get through it. So we had a lot of cash kind of just tied up in inventory. Tied up sitting there in boxes. The worst. Hate that for you. And last question, what is just a crazy story that you can share, good or bad, from the business and the journey? Yeah.
- 3:49Um, what is a crazy story? I mean, we had a nightmare batch of products coming one time. This is about two years, maybe three years ago. And it was our mirrors.
- 4:03And this was when we were still kind of warehousing at home. So we had, I think we ordered about 200 mirrors and we had them all kind of in between all these rooms and we sold maybe about 50. And then from there, we started getting customer emails saying, hey, like at night when I go to bed, there's kind of this dull flashing light going on behind my mirror. And we were like, what on earth? Like.
- 4:23We already sold 50 of these. How are we only getting this query now? And so we decided to open one up and lo and behold, there is this dull flashing light. So we speak to our supplier and basically they let us know that the flashing light was from the LED driver, which powers on. It's kind of like a lighted vanity mirror. And they essentially forgot to put this, like, the lid on it. So the flashing light that indicated that the mirror was operating was
- 4:51would peek through the actual LED screen. So we had to open every single one of these mirrors. And they're not easy products to unbox because you've got so much packaging and it's like double cartoned. So we opened every single one, put this lid on that the supplier sent us, and then we had to re-box every single one. And honestly, it took us so, so much time.
- 5:12Oh my God. And did you have to send for the 50 customers who had already bought and like received? Did you have to get them back or did you have to send them a new one? No, we didn't really want to ask our customer to, hey, open the, unscrew the back of the mirror and do this. So we were like, we'll pick it up and we'll send you a new one. So yeah, it cost us a lot as well. Oh my gosh. How much do you think it cost you? I mean, it probably more so cost us in terms of time. Like this was, it probably took us,
- 5:42more than a week. So it was, yeah, just more so the time and effort investment. But from money, I mean, it was probably a couple of thousands of dollars. Oy, oy, oy. Crazy. Crazy. Michelle, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show today and share your journey with Itwal. I'm so excited for you and I'm so excited to meet you in New York soon. Thanks so much, Dune. I'm so excited for your book launch.
- 6:13Hey, 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.
- 6:37And 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.
- 7:00As 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.
- 7:16Hey, 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.
- 7:41And 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.
- 8:03As 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.