Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Some good things must come to an end.

Transcript

Some good things must come to an end. · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  Hello, and welcome back to my Friday solo episodes. The short gist of this episode is that after almost a year of R&D on our non-alc brand, well, on our non-alc wine brand,
• 0:16
  We have decided not to move forward with it at this point. But before we get into the nitty-gritty of why and how I came to this conclusion, or, well, we came to this conclusion, let me quickly take a moment to remind you about a few dates we have in the diary.
• 0:34
  February 24th is our London launch party in partnership with Soho Works. So if you want to come and you're in town, just pop me an email to hello at femalestartupclub.com so I can add you to the list. And secondly, Monday the 28th of February is our official book launch for your hype girl, the book.
• 0:56
  We are celebrating with a launch week offer kicking off on the Monday and ending on the Friday. So make sure you make a note, put it in your diaries, get excited. I'm excited. But let's jump in today's episode and I'll step you through why some things must come to an end.
• 1:15
  Hello, it's Dune here, your host and hype girl. I was just looking back over my last episodes and it's been quite some time since I gave you all a bit of an update on the Non-Alk Wine Company. So today I want to take you through a few of the key things that happened tail end of last year, which brings us to today, the end of this chapter.
• 1:41
  For context, we've had a few new people coming in here. So if this is your first time tuning into one of my solo episodes, let me just take you down memory lane. Let's rewind a little to last January when my husband, Pierre-Antoine, and I decided that we were going to embark on a non-alcoholic wine adventure.
• 2:03
  I've been, you know, over here listening and learning all the things on the show from hundreds of brilliant women and looking for what problem I was going to solve in the world and a project that I really wanted to dig my teeth into. And during a dry January stint last year in 2021...
• 2:23
  That's what we landed on. We wanted to create or we decided to create the most premium, yummy tasting non-alc wine available on the market, all things French. And if you're in the space at all or if you've been kind of following the non-alc category, it is...
• 2:47
  booming. There is so much innovation, so many exciting things and players entering the space. The world is really changing and people are looking for alternatives.
• 3:00
  And we all know that. We all agree. So we teamed up with a master sommelier to consult with us, and this led to him becoming our business partner. And we gave him 20% of the company to join us because we knew we needed someone who had more smarts than us in this industry because we are totally new to it. So from that, we started working with a big player in the industry to develop what we wanted to develop, and things were off to the races. We had all things on the go.
• 3:29
  But the thing about what we were trying to do is that it is complex. There are multiple layers. And whilst we did have a master SOM in our corner who is extremely knowledgeable and connected to the industry and just an all-around legend, the reality of what we were trying to do was still quite interesting for folks who don't have certain levers to pull.
• 3:58
  So, but still, let me just keep giving you a little bit more context. We worked with two amazing women on our branding. Their agency is called After Hours. They're based in Brisbane. They're from Brisbane, like me, and they are just absolute shining stars. And as you might know, if you've been following along, I've never shared the name because we trademarked in the UK and we were still going through the process of trademarking in the US.
• 4:24
  which wasn't finalized. And basically, I just haven't wanted to share the name because of that. And so I think the whole thing that, you know, makes me so sad about this whole process is that just the brand and the identity that we built was or is so mind-blowingly, like, amazing. I just can't begin to tell you how much I was excited for this to come out into the world and what we'd kind of...
• 4:53
  put together in terms of creating something really different, really unique, something rooted in amazing stories. Anyway, the vibes, oh, that's what I'm really sad about, to be honest. But we built the brand. We worked with these two amazing women from After Hours, Jasmine and Shai. And yeah, you know, we had a lot of things all lined up.
• 5:21
  But there's one more thing before we kind of, you know, jump forward towards the end of the year. If you're in the loop with me and you've kind of followed along, you will know that in August, after my birthday, my grandma passed away and I wasn't able to go home. Still haven't been home yet. And it's been more than two years, but all that aside. And then two weeks later, my husband's dad died, my father-in-law. And this really rocked our world, you know.
• 5:48
  you know, as expected, but also more than we expected. So we kept working. But by the end of last year, you know, we were just both burnt out.
• 6:00
  sad, tired, and emotionally just not having a lot of extra bandwidth to try and birth this new brand into the world. And it was quite overwhelming. And so this, whilst it wasn't the catalyst, this does play a big part in us deciding not to move forward with this business. It did really feel like it was the wrong time for us.
• 6:25
  But anyway, back to the brand. We build the brand. We create a product. We literally create a top class product that was incredible, just so tasty, so good. We were so stoked about it.
• 6:40
  But, and this is the big but, the bottom line is that we just couldn't get the numbers to work. At the end of the day, what we had created was just too expensive for the consumer. And it got to a point where we kind of like reached this point where I was like,
• 7:02
  I wouldn't buy this. It's too expensive for me. And I feel like if I wouldn't buy my own product, there's a problem there. And I remember having a conversation with Leslie Carls from Midday Squares, and she was talking about her first business.
• 7:17
  which was a fashion brand and it was very high-end price point, et cetera, et cetera. And she wasn't a consumer of her own product. And it was something that just resonated with me because I was like, oh, my gosh, that's what I was feeling last year. And if you listen to that episode, you'll know that she also decided to shut that business down.
• 7:39
  So, yeah, we were basically, you know, we had this amazing female wine producer for the base wine. And we were so excited about that partnership. And we really weren't willing to compromise because the end product of what we created was just like,
• 7:56
  I mean, it was just amazing. It was three times the quality of anything else being used in the market currently. And why we know that is because the factory that we were working with to develop the non-alk wine does a lot of the major brands in the space. So we did have a direct impact.
• 8:12
  insight into what we were doing versus our competitors. And for us, the feeling is a bit like, unless you have economies of scale working in your favor, or you are in fact the winery developing the product, and you've already got this amazing base available to you, or really deep pockets, it just wasn't adding up. And
• 8:35
  You know, I think it's great to romanticize building a business and doing absolutely whatever it takes, no matter what. But for us, you know, the margin just wasn't there and it didn't make sense. Yeah.
• 8:50
  Also probably the wrong time given that we'd been through a lot of life changes. And you know what else? I think another thing about this particular company is that I didn't have that deep connection where I was so invested personally into it. Because when I look at how I feel about Female Startup Club and what we're creating here, I...
• 9:16
  well, verse what we're creating with the non-alcoholic wine, it's really different and I can't compare the two. So when I try to compare the two, I'm like, oh, well, that's funny. So basically fast forward to the end of last year, all these things have been on the go. Then we kind of start having these like feelings sneaking in and we're
• 9:42
  What happened was when you're working in wine and you're working with smaller producers, there's only one harvest a year and you have to commit to that order. And so it came time for us to commit to placing the order of the base wine and that essentially would have been shipped to our factory so that they could de-alcoat and reformulate and create our first batch or our first order of 6,000 units. And we couldn't do it. We had to pull the pin at the time that...
• 10:11
  We were really thinking like, okay, let's put this on the back burner. We can do the same thing but a year later and go for the harvest in, well, the payment and the harvest that falls in January 2023, but...
• 10:25
  Even since then, I've just realized that I don't think this is the product for me. And I feel pretty good about that, to be honest, which I'm surprised about. You know, when it came to the money piece, we were toying with whether we would use a lot, a lot, a lot of our own savings or to go down the route of friends and family round. And that
• 10:47
  Either way, that would have really locked us in because obviously that's just a lot more money to place that first order, pay for the marketing and to get started. So yeah.
• 10:59
  Having said all that, we did learn a lot about the industry. We learned a lot about the process. I learned so much about building a brand in the beverage space. And above all else, I met so many inspiring people and, you know, just saw what people are bringing to life, which was very, very cool.
• 11:19
  We did get to develop a world-class identity and overall the whole journey was just so fun. I really have no regrets. I think when we look at the numbers of what we spent, it was probably around the 20K mark, which is obviously down the drain.
• 11:36
  But it's better to do that than to go into that next phase, which I just mentioned we needed to probably have about $100,000 for the inventory of that 6,000 units, and that would be covering kind of like bottling, base costs, reformulation, you know, the base wine, et cetera, and then marketing. And so, yeah, I guess for us it was just –
• 12:03
  smarter to make the decision now and lose that 20K. And obviously that doesn't feel good. But going down the route of an additional 100 would have been super stressful trying to make it work when the numbers just didn't make sense and we couldn't make them make sense. So basically with a new year in mind and the emotional stress of last year, we decided to just...
• 12:32
  Cut it. Cut the things that weren't bringing us joy and double down on what was bringing us joy. For me, that's absolutely female startup club and, you know.
• 12:44
  what you're helping me build together. This is just so exciting. I have so much joy with Female Startup Club and I'm just going to keep putting these tiny steps one foot in front of the other to keep building this into the go-to media company for folks building the future of e-commerce and e-commerce brands.
• 13:07
  And I also think that with the book coming out at the end of this month, it's probably been good to pull back and allow myself to truly just focus on this. I started the book around the same time in January 2021. And there's definitely a lot to be said about just focusing on one thing. At the end of last year, I feel like I had a lot of brain clutter. I was just...
• 13:36
  yeah, worn out on multiple levels. And having the ability to just put all of your brain power and energy towards one thing at a time to make sure that you are setting yourself up for success is pretty cool. I'm typically the person who wants to do all the things, goes in lots of different directions. And this year I'm really leaning into having clear focus, clear goals, and just keeping laser committed to that basically.
• 14:05
  So that's where we are. That's my update on the non-alc. Kind of weird, I guess, because this will probably be the last episode about it.
• 14:17
  Maybe, maybe unless I have some questions that should be answered. I don't know. But who knows? We might try and sell the brand and the identity that we've built and, you know, combine that with our research and recipe. Maybe someone in the industry will be interested in that. Maybe the brand will make it into the world. That would be the most amazing thing. But for now, this is the end of this chapter.
• 14:43
  It's the end of that story, the non-alcoholine. But I'm sure there's going to be another. I always have a million ideas. If you are interested in chatting more, obviously slide into my DMs. I'm so down to chat. Ask me any questions. Share what you're thinking. If you've had a similar experience, I would love to hear about it and I would love to meet you. You can reach me at Doon Roisin in all the usual places,
• 15:13
  S-I-N. Oh, and by the way, last week I spoke about TikTok and I am having all sorts of fun on TikTok right now. Last week we grew, well, in the last seven days, we've grown a thousand followers in that period just from consistent posting. So if you're not getting out there and sharing your stuff on TikTok, take this as a reminder right now to start today. But that's all for now. I will see you next week. Bye.
• 15:59
  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.
• 16:23
  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.
• 16:46
  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.