Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / What would you pay for a one word domain? How do you get into 15,000 retailers? Lauren Gropper shares her journey with Repurpose

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What would you pay for a one word domain? How do you get into 15,000 retailers? Lauren Gropper shares her journey with Repurpose · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Lauren Groper for Female Startup Club. Hey everyone, it's Dune here, your host and hype girl. In this episode, we're learning from Lauren Groper, the founder of Repurpose.
• 0:21
  Today we're talking through how you actually get to the point of having 15,000 stockists, what she paid for her one word URL, getting to eight figures in revenue, and what it feels like 11 years into building this thing. Repurpose is creating green alternatives to disposable plastic since 2010. Designed by a mom, Repurpose's plant-based, compostable, and reusable tableware is good for people and our planet. Okay.
• 0:49
  As always, share this on social media and shout about it to women who would benefit from hearing these stories. We love it when you do that. Let's get stuck into this episode. This is Lauren for Female Startup Club. Lauren, hi, welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Thank you so much for having me, Dan. This is awesome.
• 1:09
  I'm so excited to be here talking to you as such a seasoned entrepreneur who's obviously been through a whole wild journey. But for those who don't know, could you introduce yourself and tell us what your business actually is? Sure. Hi, everybody. I'm Lauren Groper. I'm the founder and CEO of Repurpose, and we make plant-based compostable alternatives to plastic tableware. So we are trying to get rid of plastic with sustainable alternatives.
• 1:37
  changing the world, basically. Trying to, every little bit. I love that. Thank you. You have a wild URL, by the way, and I love to point out this URL business when someone has a really good one. How did you get this URL? Did you start with this? And for everyone listening, it's repurpose.com, which is just phenomenal. Yes, this is a real story. So we were repurposecompostables.com for a long time because Repurpose was being squatted on. And we just felt like,
• 2:05
  Okay, Repurpose Compostables is great, but it's so long and hard to spell. And, you know, we still have that, but we always want to repurpose. And we felt like we are building a brand. We need something really, really strong. But how do you get a verb?
• 2:20
  Like recycle.com or something. So someone was squatting on it. We had to do this whole stealth kind of like go through a rep and act like we weren't interested, even though we were. And the price, every time we'd be like, okay, he'd name a price. And then we would be like, okay, great. You have a deal. That sounds good. And it was like, I think it started at like 15,000 or something like that. We felt like for that, that was reasonable. But then every time we said yes, he'd be like, I changed my mind. It's 30. Yeah.
• 2:49
  I know. Until finally we did pay probably way too much. What did you pay for it? $75. I don't know. I feel like to me that sounds kind of like obviously not cheap. That's the wrong word. But I just assumed that these kind of one word URLs were like hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• 3:10
  Well, I think we did get it at a decent value, to be honest. And many of our board members were like, you don't necessarily need that. Is that the best use of funds? Could you do something like repurpose home or buy a repurpose or whatever it was? We had a bunch of different ones. But our team, my co-founders, we were like, no, we want repurpose.com, especially because we're building the brand and we have to have the name. So yeah.
• 3:37
  And I also feel like when the day comes that you want to sell the brand, that's like an asset in itself to have just that. 100%. How does it work for you with like SEO? Are there struggles there having it just as repurpose.com? So far, no. And a lot of our SEO is actually built on the old URL, but then that URL redirects to repurpose.com. But no, it sort of worked in our favor a little bit, actually.
• 4:06
  Gosh, that's awesome. What a cool, cool little story to get us started. Love that for you and for the brand. Can we go back to where this begins? We're talking circa 2010 when the brand launches. So I imagine the story starts a few years before that, or potentially quite a few years before that. So let's rewind. Take us back.
• 4:28
  Yeah. So essentially, I'd always been in the sustainability space. I started out in sustainable architecture. I was working in the green building world in New York and had been working on mostly hotels and office buildings, making them more sustainable. So going from conventional building to sustainable building, which was kind of happening in the early aughts
• 4:51
  Um, you know, that was when it really was starting to kind of take shape in New York. And I had specifically studied that. So I was in this great position where there weren't that many people really focused on it. So I got to work on a lot of great big projects because of that. I met some really interesting people.
• 5:06
  some of whom had been working in the film industry in LA. And so they sort of thought, what if you could do what you were doing with building and bring it to set design and set building and so make Hollywood sets more green, more sustainable?
• 5:21
  And that was like, oh, well, that sounds really cool. Maybe I'll do that for a little while, or I can do that alongside kind of the work I'm doing at the building. And so I came to LA to do set design that was more sustainable. And I don't know if you've ever been on a set, but the nature of a set is that it's very temporary. Everything's fast. It's kind of like hurry up and wait. There's not a lot of time for
• 5:46
  you know, for example, eating your lunch on a set of dishes, washing them, etc. It's like grab it, go. It's a grab and go kind of thing.
• 5:56
  It's like the buffet vibe. Right. And there's just like, and people drinking plastic bottles. That doesn't happen anymore. But back then it was like plastic bottles everywhere. People will take two steps and then put it down and then grab another one. And then plastic forks and everything was like just a sea of plastic behind the scenes. And actually several of the shows, not only the sets that we were working on, but I was doing shit like content about living a green life. And then behind the scenes we were doing...
• 6:23
  So it felt to me like... You're like, I'm living a double life. And to me, it just felt like this is a problem that's only going to get worse. And I didn't know anything about ocean plastic or anything like that, the problem of plastic in the ocean or how bad it was. It just felt to me like this is a waste issue. This is a problem of waste. And why are we using petroleum that we...
• 6:44
  It's a finite resource that we dig out of the ground to make a product like a fork that we use for five minutes and then throw it away. And then it lasts forever. Like that just makes no sense. And so it felt to me like this was an area that was ripe for disruption, much like what was happening in the building industry. It felt like we can take those same lessons.
• 7:06
  and apply kind of a more sustainable design approach to these everyday kind of plastic tableware products. Why can't we just use a different kind of product to make them? And so in my research, I came across several different technology companies that were kind of using advanced materials, using...
• 7:22
  basically plant-based chemistry to create plastic. It was like, it mimicked plastic, but the food stock was plant-based versus a polymer, much like, you know, beyond meat, impossible foods. But if those things existed, like why was there still so much plastic being made? Price primarily. So plastic is very cheap. Foam is very, very cheap. And when, you know,
• 7:50
  people really were more concerned, obviously, over the bottom line than they were at the time about sustainability. That's rapidly changing and has changed in many areas. But back then it was like,
• 8:01
  If you can get it for the same price, great, I'm all for it, but it never was the same price. So it was really hard to create sort of like this mass adoption. But technology has improved hugely over the last decade. The price has come down a ton. And so now we're talking about a much more level playing field, much like in the renewable energy space. You're seeing a much more level playing field and you can purchase more cheap renewable energy. So yeah.
• 8:31
  Long story short, the idea was let's use an alternative to petroleum-based plastics because we still need something that's disposable. Also back then, it was not like
• 8:44
  The thought process, there was not that kind of same adoption to a new system. Like let's use reusables and create a whole reusable system that people weren't open to that. That was just like way too far. So I think coming up with this sort of, okay, you still need your disposable goods, but what can we do that's more sustainable? That's made from plants that uses less water, that uses less energy to make, that can also be at the end of its life composted, meaning it can break down into nothing, into soil, and then be used to grow plants again.
• 9:14
  The concept of zero waste is what we're going for. Or there's another buzzword called circular economy. It's a much more circular process because you're using plants to create the product. And then when you dispose of the product, it basically breaks down into soil that can be used to grow plants again.
• 9:31
  So that's, that's also kind of, that's kind of like the thesis of sustainable design is thinking about how a product is made, thinking about how it's used, and then thinking about how it's disposed of. And when you design the product, you design with circularity in mind versus kind of take from the ground, make your product, and then it turns into waste. You kind of want to eliminate the concept of waste.
• 9:53
  So it was this sort of more kind of like intellectual pursuit that I'd studied. And I felt like this was an amazing application for it because we could make products out of an alternative, you know, feedstock, i.e. plants that had a much lighter footprint and could be disposed of in a way that left no ways behind.
• 10:11
  And so that was kind of the initial piece. And then we always wanted to be a brand. So the technology obviously had existed for several years. Again, it was in its infancy. So there were aspects of the technology that didn't work super well. The products sometimes were inconsistent. They didn't have the same durability as the conventional products. It was more expensive. There were a lot of issues to kind of like,
• 10:38
  get that mainstream adoption, but we did feel like this is going to be something big. This is going to be a category that people will eventually switch to and we want to be the Kleenex, like the brand name of it. So that was because there were several companies at the time, those much bigger now, they were small at the time that were doing.
• 10:58
  kind of more, you know, they were on campuses, college campuses. They were servicing some hotels and very progressive cafes. But again, it was still quite fringe. And so we felt like, okay, there are some minor players, but there's no one has brand recognition and we can really take, we can really own that. And this is going to be the future, so we should own that.
• 11:18
  So that was the whole, that was the thought process. And then I think the next step is really to figure out what is the go-to-market strategy? Where are you going to sell this technology and these products? At the time, we had some amazing innovation and kind of we had this coffee cup that was using this plant-based insulation. So you didn't need a sleeve or anything like that. And we thought this could be, that was like our hero product at the time when we launched.
• 11:46
  And we got a lot of press on it. And that was how we kind of got ourselves into some of these big retailers because it was super innovative. You know, it replaced all the conventional products. You didn't need a sleeve. It was insulated and had our brand name all over it. Our old brand. We've since actually rebranded. We rebranded a couple of years ago. But- What was the first name? It was still repurposed, but it was like very- Oh, right. With the compostables. You know, Eco 1.0, it was like a green leaf on a white background. You know-
• 12:18
  But we sort of did that purposefully, too, because we wanted people to just immediately recognize, oh, that's eco. You know, it's got a green leaf. So that was kind of an easy way to make people have that immediate recognition. And that's what got us onto store shelves. So our go-to-market strategy was really, we're going to go into, you know, the goal is always the targets and the Walmarts.
• 12:40
  But let's start with whatever we can get our hands on and get on retail shelves to build the brand and be a replacement for what people are currently buying. Because when we started, if you were having a small gathering at home or a large party or whatever,
• 12:55
  you literally could not buy anything sustainable. You would have to buy plastic, even if you live the rest of your life in a sustainable way. So, you know, at the time, friends and I, we were buying organic produce. We were using sustainable cleaning products. You know, we lived a more sustainable life.
• 13:14
  But we'd have a party and it would be full of plastic products. So this was a way that we could get into people's homes and build a brand and be an alternative that didn't exist. And, you know, it didn't exist at the time for a number of reasons, not because nobody had necessarily thought about it, just because there was not a big enough market. Like that is actually a bit of a takeaway. Yeah.
• 13:39
  You can have the most innovative product, but if there's not enough kind of education and awareness about what that is, you're going to spend a lot of time and money educating people about why they need the product and what it is. So it's a little bit easier to kind of join a bandwagon and get in on a trend when it's already kind of there.
• 14:00
  And is that what you had to do? You had to educate the market and get people. Yeah. Like, why should I even have this product today? We don't really have to do that. The awareness is there. So now we just built it. Yeah. But we didn't build. I mean, the lucky piece was that, you know, the media and what had been going on with all the plastic in the ocean had built up this like, you know, huge awareness around the problems of plastic. And so we didn't have to do that heavy lifting.
• 14:26
  But you're kind of creating a new product that's a new product category or you're innovating on that's something entirely new. It is the timing piece is really hard because you do want to be the first. There's a big advantage to being the first mover.
• 14:40
  But also you're that, then you're stuck with a lot of that education and awareness building, which is obviously just costly. And so it's hard. I mean, oftentimes they say like the second entrant kind of has the biggest advantage because the first mover does a lot of the work and then the second one is still really early. Riding that wave. Yeah. And so, you know, we always talk about it like,
• 15:04
  we've seen so many trends, especially in food and beverage over the years. In early days, it was like coconut water and then cold brew and kombucha. I'm just thinking beverage. It's an easy one. Or like gluten-free snacks, whatever it is. You see so many entrants come in, but at the same time, which is hard because when you have a lot of competitors, that's another challenge. But
• 15:25
  the advantage there is you're riding a trend where consumers want this stuff, right? So, you know, there's, there's that that's built in. Totally. But anyway, yeah. In the early days, there was definitely a lot of,
• 15:39
  resistance from, for us getting into some mass retail because they, they, and they were right that there just wasn't enough awareness and there wasn't enough of a market for people that would actually buy this debt. So they thought it would just sit on the shelf. Right. Or they thought, oh, this green thing's just a fad. Like we don't really, we're not, no. And I,
• 16:00
  the major players in our category are huge multinational companies with huge budgets that basically can kind of buy their way to stay in the position that they have on the shelf. So it's difficult. It's very difficult to penetrate. Um, and that was, that was a massive effort. I mean, the first five years we, we spent just knocking on doors and being persistent. And when they said no, we would constantly come back and just push, push, push, push, push, push, push.
• 16:29
  Oh my gosh. Gosh, I've got so many questions for you. There's so many things I want to ask. First question, in the very beginning, in those early days, how much capital did you kind of need to actually get started? It obviously sounds like, you know, there was probably a lot that was required. And B, did you kind of see yourself building a brand to what it is today? Like, did you see this future or what was the vision?
• 16:57
  The vision was this future. We really felt like we want to be this, you know, ubiquitous brand that is in everybody's homes. And we still have a ways to go there for sure. But we felt like we could be the next generation's, you know, tide or, you know, the next generation of products that.
• 17:17
  people know and trust in where it serves that kind of sustainable lifestyle, which people want finally. But in terms of the capital raise in the early days, this is something that I think is a, is a huge takeaway and what I always tell people is,
• 17:33
  We were in a really lucky position in that I had built up enough of kind of a career prior that I was able to do consulting work while we were starting this company. So I didn't have to take any salary for the first several years. And that's kind of crucial because all the funding should go into the company, not necessarily to pay yourself. We were always scraping by. I mean, it was just so hard in those early days because we had this big vision, but again, no proof.
• 18:03
  And people really had to believe in just the vision and kind of what we were building. And at the time, like I said, there wasn't really that awareness that there is today. So getting big investors was hard. So we got, luckily we had friends and family that were supportive. We did angel invest, you know, we had, we did a round of angel investments, investments.
• 18:23
  But it took, it wasn't like one or two. It was many, many, many writing small checks because they felt like, well, you know, the odds are you're probably going to fail. So I'll put in a little bit, like I'll give you $10,000 or maybe $25,000. But we weren't getting big checks in the early days.
• 18:42
  We stuck it out. We really stuck it out. We pushed through. We persisted. Yeah. And, and also, you know, we had put in as, as founders, we, we invested ourselves. So it, you know, those early days are so tough because it is so hard. I mean, I think it's, it's better now. I do think it's better now than it was 10 years ago. There's many, many more funds that come in at the very early stage, like seed or even pre-seed. Um, um,
• 19:10
  There's many more funds investing in women, female founded companies in sustainability. But back then there wasn't at all to the same degree. I mean, there were a few, but it was few and far between. So it was tough. It was definitely those early days. I mean, raising money is always hard, but that was really hard.
• 19:31
  Yeah. A lot of people say that on the show, that fundraising was like one of the most difficult kind of roles to take on, especially in those early days. And, you know, adjusting yourself to the rejection that you get and the relentless pursuit that you have to have to get it. You know, I always just, my motto is always like, okay, one door closes, another door opens. One door closes, another door opens. Because, I mean, in some cases, yeah, maybe they just
• 20:02
  your metrics don't match what they need to, you know, their fund metrics, et cetera, or whatever. I mean, there's so many things. And especially when you've got kind of like this, you know, a product that is not, it is a little bit outside the norm and is, you know, you're trying to prove this, this mission when maybe the market's not there yet. I think there's a lot of skepticism that we had a lot of skepticism in the early days.
• 20:29
  So it's not often that I actually have someone on the show that's been in business for such a long time. You know, we're talking like 11 years, nearly 12 years here that you've had the business going. And I really want to understand like what it takes to get from there where things were really hard and really pushing to circa now, which is like stocked in 15,000 stores, you know, all over the place, 10x growth since 2015, something crazy. Like how?
• 20:56
  Like it's hard for me to comprehend that kind of scale and the journey of what's from A to B to C to D. Do you know what I mean? So I'm trying to understand what those pivotal moments have been in the growth and why you think it's been able to get to this point and how. I think it's really been, well, for one, it's definitely like one foot in front of the other.
• 21:27
  I think there are easier ways, but I mean also, okay. So back then as, as many understand, when you, when you're raising money, you, you generally raise with a, either you have a price round worth a set valuation, or you're doing a convertible note or a safe where you often do have a cap or some discount or whatever. And so that determines how much equity you as a founder get to keep and how much you have to give away. And,
• 21:57
  back then,
• 21:58
  the valuations were a lot smaller, especially for consumer companies, especially for being more founded companies, especially for sustainability companies. So we started out with this very, very tiny valuation. As such, we had to give away quite a bit of the company, even just to get nominal dollars. And so that kind of plagued us from day one because we never could do this gigantic raise, which we needed, but couldn't do because we'd be giving away so much of the company because our valuation was really low.
• 22:28
  My takeaway there is if you can raise on a convertible note or a safe where you don't have to price it and can just say, I'll give you a discount to the next round, 100% do that because then you don't box yourself in. But at the time, that was kind of the only way we could get the funding. So we did it. And because of that, we had to kind of continually raise in these small increments. And we had the need for inventory. Yeah.
• 22:52
  So those that are in consumer businesses, that's a huge, huge thing. Your inventory costs are gonna be a big piece of basically your investment and where money's going in the early days. For us at least, I mean, it's always just a source of, a constant source of like, you know, you have to buy the inventory. We produce our inventory in Asia and, you know, we sell in the United States. And so for us, there's a very long lead time between when we have to pay
• 23:22
  our partners, factories to produce the product. And then it has to ship here. And then we have to get it to the stores and then it has to sell. And then we get paid. So you're always, as you grow, you're, you're running out of money constantly. So it's like this double-edged sword. Like the more you grow, the more money you need. And, you know,
• 23:39
  the bigger that kind of valley is in terms of covering your costs. So for those that are starting anew, if you can create some sort of terms with whoever's producing your inventory, like where like you pay them when you get paid, or, you know, you have some kind of like net 30 or net 60 or something where you're not putting a cash advance to get the product, that will save you in terms of how much you have to raise in the future, et cetera, and just leave the cash in your business.
• 24:06
  Because the more the cash is going out for those big purchases, the more you don't have to spend on marketing, to pay your people, to grow the business. And is that what you were doing?
• 24:17
  In some ways, yeah, we would do like inventory funds where we'd raise from investors to buy inventory because, again, back then we were profitable, so we weren't bankable, so we couldn't just get a bank loan to do it. Now there are tons of different, there's like all these online resources where you can do like working capital funding. They take a huge interest rate. It's like a bigger credit card, but sometimes that's even cheaper than equity, but a way to kind of purchase your inventory. Yeah.
• 24:43
  As we grew, we were in this conundrum of like, okay, well, now we're growing and we need more money and more money and more money. And luckily, we did have some incredible supporters from the early days that continued to support us. But I was just in a constant kind of like hamster wheel of fundraising because as we grew, we just needed more and more. And also, that means your equity is constantly going down. So you're thinking like, if I ever want to exit. It's got to be big.
• 25:11
  Yeah, it's going to have to be so big to be able to make it worthwhile. Exactly. Especially over such a long time. Exactly. So what happened? How did you get around that? Well, we've been doing things like issuing options and giving ourselves stock options. But, you know, that's been the issue. We've had to raise really carefully and choose when we do, even though we need more money. And so it's been this constant balancing act of, you know, I would love to go out and raise money.
• 25:40
  you know, 10 million, 20 million right now, we can really use it. And, and that's something that we are considering. But again, it comes at, you know, will that, will that investment, I think the question to always ask yourself is whatever investment you're taking in, whatever equity you're giving away, will that result in the kind of growth that you're looking for to, to increase the value of the company by a multiple?
• 26:04
  Right. It's like to 100 million with that valuation kind of thing. Yeah. You have to be. It's hard because when as a founder, when someone wants to give you millions of dollars, that's very.
• 26:15
  you know, that's gratifying. You're like, Oh yeah, that's amazing. It's a new shiny thing, but it's not always the best thing for your business. Like if I could do it again and take way less money and exit early and still have that same take home, like that's, and there's, that's, that's the equation that you're always sort of doing. But at the same time, you're just like, I just want to grow my business. I just want to build this brand. I'm working so hard on my day to day just to get this going. Like,
• 26:40
  At the same time, you have to be thinking through these other things. And so I think to me, that's one of the biggest challenges that like you have to work in the business to grow the business. But at the same time, think about, well, how how am I going to fund this in the right way and the ownership, et cetera, et cetera. And so. The great thing, I think, also about having partners or co-founders is you can each take on some of those roles.
• 27:06
  almost to a full-time capacity so that, you know, for me, I was always out fundraising. It would have been really hard to manage day-to-day and fundraise at the same time to the amount of fundraising I had. Like it just is impossible. I know some people do it.
• 27:21
  I, you know, I couldn't do that. And so I have co-founders and partners that were managing aspects of the business, like some of the day to day or managing all the sales. Like I would be involved, but not to that day to day level. And so it freed up the time to fundraise and make sure that we always had, you know, the money that we needed to execute whatever we need to execute. Yeah.
• 27:43
  So it is, it is in terms of like getting from A to B to C to D, every stage has its massive challenges. A lot of, a lot of it is just like, especially when you're pioneering a product, it's just the time, like you need time to get, to get people aware of your product and to get the growth happening and, and time is money and you need people and people to work.
• 28:07
  you know, super hard, but at the same time, you don't necessarily have all the money to reward them with all that hard work. And so you've got to give equity or something to get them excited about wanting to work for you that hard. I mean, we're super lucky with who we have on our team. Everybody's really passionate about what we're doing, super hard workers and just really put in that extra mile to make us,
• 28:33
  what we are today. So it's, it's like, there's just every stage, I think, like you get to a certain point, for example, you know, maybe from zero to 1 million is a thing. And then after 1 million, it's like, wow, I've fully made it, but no, no, no, no, no. There's so many, so many challenges. And from one to 5 million is kind of like another stage.
• 28:55
  And after five and then after 10 and after 20 and after like at each stage, there's just different massive challenges that I think it's all about the people you surround yourself with and who, and bringing in like, we have tons of advisors that have kind of been there and done that. So they can sort of say, Hey, when you get to this stage, here's the things you need to be thinking about. And this stage needs to be thinking about because you don't know what you don't know.
• 29:26
  I've never done that. And so I think there are some founders that have a bit
• 29:32
  of that cocky attitude where they think we can do it. You know, I always took the attitude of like, I have never done this. I don't know at all what I don't know. And I will take all the help I can get because I want this to be successful, you know, and I want this to be, you know, I want this vision to be realized. And this is going to be like, we just knew that this is going to be something that people are going to care about. And this is going to be something that will be in people's lives. So it should be us.
• 30:00
  you know, we're the ones to do it. Totally, totally. And so that's actually been part of my motivation. Like somebody's going to do this and this category is growing and growing and we were here first and we should be the ones to do it. Yeah, I love that attitude. That's a great attitude to have.
• 30:18
  In the beginning, in that kind of like, you know, working towards seven figures or working towards like, you know, first few millions in revenue, that kind of thing. Who were the first key hires that helped you get to that stage? Or was it you just pounding the pavement, knocking on doors and being like, please stop my product?
• 30:36
  No, I needed people. We were a tiny team for a very long time. So it was myself and I had two partners, one of whom took on more of the operations and logistics and kind of inventory, inventory, demand planning, forecasting, that kind of thing. And another one that really handled all sales and marketing. And I was fundraising. And so I would do some of the sales. I had no marketing background, so really none of the marketing. But
• 31:04
  You know, we would kind of do some sales together in the very early days. But we needed, you know, I think our first hire was more like bookkeeper, accountant, who's now our head of finance. She's been with us for 10 years. She's amazing. Wowza. That's amazing. I know. She was our first hire. And I mean, she really handled all the kind of back of house systems and setup that we had. We had nothing.
• 31:28
  And so that was absolutely huge. And then we really had a small number of people wearing multiple hats. Much of our first hours were actually on the sales side because for us, you know, we weren't digitally native. We were selling into brick and mortar. And so you need like feet on the street. You need a lot of people out there. And we did have reps that we worked with, but we needed more sort of like
• 31:52
  Every day, full time support there. So we sort of built that side first and then kind of the back of house operations to build it and then slowly have kind of rounded out all of our teams. So now we have a marketing team, a sales team, an accounting team, an operations team.
• 32:10
  And we all work together. But at first it was like, you know, one person doing accounting operations, everything. I mean, everyone was doing a bit of everything. And that's kind of, you know, that's what's awesome. I think about startups, it's just like roll up your sleeves and get it done and do 20 things and just make it happen because no one else is going to and like hustle, hustle, hustle.
• 32:33
  You know, you don't have the systems, you don't have the processes. Maybe you're doing things the wrong way, probably too quickly. You know, it's just, it's like a tornado. But on the other hand, that's how you get, that's, that for us was like how we grew because we were like, you know, we'll take no more answer, going to make this happen and let's roll up our sleeves and do it. And everybody had that attitude. So yeah.
• 32:57
  That was crucial. I think it's so much different in a big company where you have teams and support and systems and processes. And like, we had none of that. I mean, we're building to that now because at a certain stage you kind of do, you need that. But yeah, for us, the key hires was, and I think for a lot of people, the founder is often doing kind of like all the operations and so much day to day. And the minute you can kind of get out of that,
• 33:26
  is
• 33:28
  is a big step, is a huge, huge step because somebody needs to be thinking about the big things and the big partnerships and the big relationships and, you know, the fundraising and the investment and how, how you're going to kind of get from A to B to C on a company, on an investment level, not just, you know, on your go-to-market. So the minute you can kind of get out of the weeds by hiring either director of operations or if you're in the weeds of sales, whoever that key hire is, wherever you're,
• 33:57
  You know, I think on a digitally native brand, it might be like your head of growth, your head of marketing, whoever can take that on and allow you to kind of like breathe for a minute is a huge key hire. And as soon as you can do that, the problem is you need the money to be able to pay for somebody good or... Pay for the talent. You got to pay for the talent or give them the equity. Right. Because you need that talent. You need the talent. And you don't also want people that will commit and not...
• 34:27
  you know, you don't want a revolving door. And I think that's something that we've been really lucky with. I mean, we've had most of our key players have been with us for years and years. Yeah, that's crazy. And I imagine that's also because, you know, you've got a really purpose driven brand, you actually are changing the world. And so people can align themselves with that long term versus something that's, you know, not doing anything for the planet.
• 34:48
  For you, obviously you built this as a brick and mortar, like wholesale play in the beginning, but you've obviously transformed and transitioned to being e-commerce as well and direct to consumer. What's that transition been like and what's kind of working for you now? That's been our transition, to be honest, because it's just not something that was one of our core competencies. And we've kind of had to rethink how we position ourselves
• 35:16
  online versus in store. It's really different. The value proposition of what we offer to somebody buying online is very different than why they're buying in store. And the customer journey is really different. And so getting around that and understanding when somebody's
• 35:36
  here are the reasons they're buying and here's where they're buying. Whereas once, why are they buying online? Why would they buy direct from us? When are they buying on Amazon? When are they buying on a walmart.com or target.com or what have you or an affiliate site? It's, you have to kind of map all those customer journeys and it was just way different approach to what we had already developed and also a different kind of prioritization of products. So for example,
• 36:06
  what people are buying online and what works for, from an e-commerce perspective is really, you know, something that people are going to buy over and over and over again. You know, it's not just a one time buy. And so for us, you know, tableware is, you know, it's not that over and over and over again. We do have trash bags, which is what we saw. We're really selling big time because people,
• 36:28
  We're using them all the time. You need them all the time. And so the thought process was, okay, well, we want to... If we're going to pay to acquire a customer, we want them to have something to buy again and again, but that's also sustainable. So what is that? It was trash bags. Now we're launching toilet paper and paper towel made from bamboo. Ephesus certified 100% bamboo because...
• 36:52
  if you're going to buy your trash bags, you might as well, oh, you can buy your toilet paper here too. And like, that wasn't something we'd ever thought or started with because our mission was the plastic issue. And so how does toilet paper align with that? But at the same time, it is plant-based. It's a replacement for, you know, tree-based toilet paper and something that people replenish and buy all the time. And so online, we're much more about kind of
• 37:17
  Replace it with repurpose is our kind of our value. Replace these everyday items that you do all the time with repurpose products because it's an easy switch. You can subscribe and save. And that is how we position ourselves online. Whereas in store, people are mostly buying plates and bowls and forks and things for part. They're not buying, you know, they are buying trash bags, but.
• 37:41
  People are looking for those products. So it's a little bit different and you really have to, the branding, the positioning, the way you kind of put yourself out there is different. We also launched reusable products several years ago for kids. So alternative to all the plastic kind of, you know, kids sets that you see out there. These are non-toxic. These are made from bamboo and corn and cassava and, you know, it's all plant-based.
• 38:08
  But again, that's a much different proposition than what you're buying in store. We don't sell those in store. So it has been a big transition. And I think anyone going into business now probably will be digitally native first because that just is kind of the easiest entry point. And so you already have that, you know, you already develop that value proposition from an e-commerce perspective, and then that can be translated to store. But I would encourage people, it is a very different channel. There are very different channels.
• 38:37
  And so it takes almost like a different, definitely a different go-to-market strategy. It's a whole different marketing strategy. But I think what I'm seeing, I think, I mean, we have an advantage in that we do have all this distribution in wholesale. Great. And I know a lot of times companies want that. They're doing well in e-com, but they want that actual footprint, which is often a little bit harder to,
• 39:06
  The negative about having the brick and mortar or sort of the wholesale distribution is you're at the mercy of these other, you know, you're at the mercy of their schedules. The big, big accounts like the Walmarts and the Targets, they've got very set schedules. So if they decide they don't want to take you one year, you're waiting like 18 months before you even get in there again. And you can't really run a business that way. So it's hard. You have to kind of fill in with other accounts.
• 39:36
  with Amazon, et cetera, I think it's a great way, great way to start. Obviously, I think there's a lot of equally big capital requirements, and I know it's getting tougher and tougher in terms of customer acquisition and those costs going up, et cetera.
• 39:54
  But you get to know your customer, you get to know what's working and not working right away. All the analytics are right there. It's, I mean, I'm just learning, but I think it's amazing. Primed for scale. Yeah, I love it.
• 40:07
  This is probably a really stupid question, but like where to from here? Because you're obviously, you know, in all the key accounts, you've grown the brand, you know, so much. You're obviously doing the D2C thing. You're introducing new products. What's the kind of North Star that you're working towards now? What's the next step? And also where to for you, you know, being in the business for 11 years, at what point do you think like, what's your roadmap? Like how long do you think you'll be able to stay in the business for without being
• 40:36
  you know, tired and burnt out and ready to, maybe you already are. Well, I think we still have a long way to go in terms of, I mean, we are in all these stores, but we're not in their full footprint. And so we have a long way to go to sort of get that full footprint. I think e-commerce for us is just starting. We're just in the infancy. So that's even a business in itself to build.
• 41:04
  Product development is such a huge area for us. And there's so many new and innovative, cool products. There's so many new, cool technologies that we can partner with to create all these amazing products. And I think there's just still so much to be done. There obviously is a day at which I say, okay, you know, I've been in this program all the time. Maybe it's time to pass the torch. But I think that there's still so much brand building to be done. Very interesting partnerships. I think there's a lot of work yet to be done.
• 41:33
  And I think we've come very far for sure, but there's still so much to do. So I do feel like, you know, there's still a long way to go. And I'm excited. You've got more fuel in the tank. I've got more fuel in the tank. And we'll see how far that takes us. But I'm excited. I think this next phase, kind of integrating the brick and mortar with e-commerce and seeing where that goes is very interesting. And how we can kind of create the flywheel with all those channels is exciting.
• 42:04
  Domination, global domination across all the channels, all the places. Yes, actually, that's a good point. What? No way. Yeah. So. Oh, my gosh. So actually global domination. That's the next thing. The actual next thing. That's another mountain to climb. I mean, I'm not in Canada yet.
• 42:22
  We're not in Canada yet. Our products are not in Canada yet. And so that's one, just being from there. I would love to have our products there as a step. But yes, I think as the world moves to a more sustainable future, I think...
• 42:37
  we have a place around the world as a brand. I can't wait for all the restaurants that do takeaway, that are built on the basis of takeaway to make the switch. Because especially if you're going a few nights a week to get sushi or something like that, that's such a, it's the worst.
• 42:58
  I'm conscious of the time. So I've got one more question before we get into the six quick questions that I ask end of every episode. What is your key piece of advice for entrepreneurs who are earlier on in the journey, but they have that big vision and that big idea? I really think take it one step at a time because, you know, you're not going to get there overnight and there's many little wins along the way. Raise way more money than you think you need.
• 43:26
  Always, it's going to take double the amount of time and double the amount of money, as they say, or more. But that's true. That's absolutely true. And I think don't give up. I mean, there's so many times where like, you know, the rejection hits you or whatever it is that, you know, it would be easier probably just to quit. And I don't know, I read a quote somewhere the other day that was like, every successful person, the thing they have in common is that they never give up.
• 43:56
  That's so true. Love that. Yeah, I think that's what separates kind of the successful ones from the not so successful. Nice. I always operate by the stop stopping. If you just stop stopping, then you just keep it on. Keep on keeping on. Keep on keeping on.
• 44:14
  Okay, let's get into the six quick questions I ask them at the end of every episode to everyone I speak to. Some of them we might have covered already, but I ask them all the same. Question number one, what's your why? Why are you doing what you're doing? My why is to be part of the solution. I want to be on that side and really contribute to something and have a purpose. And I think it feels that way every day with Repurpose.
• 44:44
  I love that. It's like being on the right side of like shaping, you know, the future. That's, that's my way. Yeah. Really cool. Question number two is what do you think has been the number one marketing moment that made the business pop?
• 45:02
  The number one marketing moment, I think, was in the US in 2018, there was a ban on plastic straws. And there was an article in National Geographic, or maybe it was just a picture on the internet that went viral with a straw in a sea turtle's nose. Oh, the turtle. Oh my God, I hate that photo. I know. But that did it. That was, we were getting calls from everyone. Do you make straws? Do you make compostable straws? We're getting rid of our plastic straws. And that was the catalyst.
• 45:31
  That was really like, you know, doors that we had been banging down for years. Once that they wanted our straw and then we said, well, we don't only have straws. We have all these other products. And we'd had the straw already, I think, in development for just over a year by the time the ban happened. So we were ready. We had it. We were ready to go. And that was a game changer.
• 45:54
  Wow. You really can't plan for that. That's crazy. That's a lot of serendipity that plays into that, I think. Yeah. Nothing that we did, but- Crazy. Yeah. Amazing. Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What are you reading or listening to or subscribing to that others should know about? I'm a big podcast listener and I do audiobooks as well. I'd
• 46:19
  I was actually just telling a friend, I really slowed down my actual reading, which is terrible to admit, but I, I fall asleep. Like the time I have is in the evening and I can only get like four pages in. So the audio books thing has been huge podcast. There's a really great podcast that I've recently listened to called pivot. It's with Kara Swisher and I'm forgetting, and Scott Galloway.
• 46:44
  And it's really, really, they're just so smart. And it's interesting. It kind of covers business, technology, just what's happening politically. And they kind of combine it all. I just, I like their perspective. So that's been a really good one. But yeah, to me, it's all about the podcasts. Great. I'm going to link it in the show notes. I also just got a membership to, not Jess, but I've been using it. My sister and brother-in-law gave it to me to Masterclass.
• 47:11
  Oh, how good is Masterclass? I love it. It's good. Yeah, it's great. So interesting. So many interesting people on there. Really cool. Question number four is how do you win the day? And that's around your AM or your PM rituals and habits that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated. So this is also new for me. So I've got young kids.
• 47:33
  And they help me win the day because they're just, I love being around them and having time with them just is what gives me, what kind of enriches me. But I think this is new for me. I've started doing, you know, workouts, some kind of exercise and stretching and whatever every day, five days of the week.
• 47:51
  just felt like, oh, I don't have time to do this before. And it does get to you. I mean, I think in COVID was when I was always somewhat active. And then COVID, I just was like not and couldn't go to the gym, et cetera. So I just didn't. And I really started feeling it in every aspect of my life. And just once things kind of lifted here and I could start doing that again, I just felt like I'm going to do, I've got to make this a priority.
• 48:16
  and do this every day. So I totally understand when people say I don't have the time, because I actually didn't used to have the time when we were working in an office in LA. My commute was like 30 to 45 minutes. And so I got the kids ready, would go to work, drive to work, be there all day, drive home, kids, dinner, da, da, da, da, like, where do you work out?
• 48:42
  I mean, I couldn't, my husband actually leaves the house really, really early in the morning. So it's not like I could like be like, bye honey, I'm going for a workout. Like he's gone at five. So there's some getting up in the middle of the night, but now we're remote. We work remotely. So I have the ability to kind of do those. And that's been a game changer. And I love it. Love that for you. Love that for you. Really great. Yeah. And working remote, like, okay, that's another one. Working remotely.
• 49:10
  I really, really have enjoyed it. I think we've always been a company about flexibility and getting people that flexibility. But I think, you know, it's been great for us. We're super productive. We work really well. I mean, there's obviously things that are a challenge remotely, but for the most part, it's been just amazing. Yeah, working remote's great. I love it. Great. Question number five is if you were given $1,000 of no strings attached grant money, where would you spend it?
• 49:40
  Probably at the gambling table. I mean, I would want to make it into something, make it into more somehow, because I don't know how far it would go with our business. I mean, yeah, I would want to see what I could do to make that grow or invest it into something very, you know, high risk, high reward. Lucrative. Yeah. Love that. Question number six is how do you deal with failure? What's your mindset and approach when things do not go to plan?
• 50:10
  Well, that happens a lot. I just feel like this is just part of it. This is going to happen. My fallback is always, I know that I'm doing the best that I can and I'm working really hard. And as long as I have that, I feel like I've put in my best effort. So I've done the best I can. I've
• 50:34
  push as hard as I can to do whatever I can. And sometimes it's not enough. And sometimes it's way more than enough. But if I know that, then I'm okay with it. I'm okay with the outcome because I know I did everything I could.
• 50:49
  This was so awesome. I've loved chatting with you. I think you are on this crazy mission that, you know, you've had to have been really dedicated to and had such conviction to go through it for such a long time already. And to be only still at this place where you feel like you're just getting started on things like D2C and the e-commerce side of things. So I'm in awe of what you're doing. Thank you so much for sharing your story on the show today.
• 51:16
  Thank you so much. I appreciate all those kind words and thank you so much for doing what you're doing and highlighting all these incredible women. So thank you, Dune.
• 51:28
  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.
• 51:53
  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.
• 52:15
  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. Thank you.
• 52:32
  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.
• 52:56
  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.
• 53:19
  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.