Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / SUMMER ‘23 - 6 Questions with Erin Deering, Founder of Triangl (Part 2)

Transcript

SUMMER ‘23 - 6 Questions with Erin Deering, Founder of Triangl (Part 2) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  Hey, it's Dune here. I'm recording this quick message to let you know that over the next few weeks, we'll be playing some of our favorite episodes from the past year while I spend some time with my best friends and family back in my other home, London. If you missed these episodes the first time around, they are so good and packed with so much value. I know you're going to love them just as much as I did recording them. See you soon. Bye. Welcome back. Here are the six
• 0:39
  So question number one is what's your why? Why do you wake up every day now and build Erin Deering.com? Because I feel incredible every single day and I want people to feel that way too. And everyone can if they start to be really honest with themselves. My why is sharing how I feel and making sure everyone else. That's true. It's a damn good one.
• 1:09
  Question number two is what was your favourite marketing moment in building Triangle? No, I would say the initial interactions and when I would nurture a relationship with a customer and they would write me an email to say how blown away they were with the effort and the care that went into every process of marketing.
• 1:32
  And how proud that made me. Those marketing moments were really what set Triangle up to be the brand that it was. So that encouragement is what fed me. So that was like those really early moments were my proudest moments. Amazing. Question number three is what's your go-to business resource if you have to name a book or a newsletter or a podcast that you're reading, listening, subscribing to at the moment?
• 2:01
  At the moment, I'm not really doing anything businessy like that. I'm more in the other space. But what popped into my head then was The Lean Startup, which is the book that we read before we started Triangle. It's old. It's pretty old, but it's still a classic and I would say very important for people that want it.
• 2:21
  start a business because you can spend a lot of money really quickly if you don't take care of your money it goes real fast so yeah that's my that's my tried and tested book but at the moment you know obviously i'm more of a podcast girl so darry the ceo um the mentor mark boris
• 2:39
  And they're just kind of easy ones to like tap in and out of. I actually have one of my girlfriends listens to podcasts a lot more than me and she'll just send me like bits and say, listen to this five minutes, listen to that 10 minutes there, listen to that. I know. I'm like. Love that. A little bank of the good bits. Question number four is how do you win the day right now? What are your AM or PM rituals and habits that keep you feeling energized and happy and successful? Yeah.
• 3:07
  Yeah, I am is my I'm a morning person, early riser, and I have kids. So thank God I am that way anyway. But I work out every morning pretty much. I don't push myself. I do sustainable exercise. I do the strength training or walking or a bit of Pilates. And it's really just taking that time for me. That's how I win the day. I value myself every single morning.
• 3:30
  I get out of bed, I go and do something that clears my head. It's like meditative for me. I actually go for walks now and don't listen to anything. I just, you know, just take the day in. And that's really how I win the day because if I've taken that time for myself, I'm going to be a little bit more.
• 3:45
  to do something that's not, it's so easy for me to wake up and jump onto emails or jump onto something or talk about something because I get things from the US overnight while I'm sleeping. So it's like, I could even wake up at 3am and I did this morning and read an email, but that's my, that's my thing. Nighttimes is definitely, I just go to bed early, but the morning is how I live in the day for sure. And valuing myself enough to do something good for me. I love that.
• 4:09
  Question number five is what has been your worst money mistake in the business and how much did it cost you? Oh, there's so many. There's so many. Two huge ones that probably should have killed our business. Tell us both. Yeah, okay. Well, the first one is that we used to do all our fulfillment out of Hong Kong ourselves.
• 4:31
  So it was in our tiny little warehouse studio apartment place and we decided we had to get rid of it. This was taking up like five, six hours of every single day and it was just not the best use of time. So we outsourced to a third party facility, decided that we would carry it over the Chinese border without...
• 4:52
  doing it properly because we didn't want to pay tax because we didn't want to spend that money. So we put it in suitcases and tried to illegally drive it over the border and got caught and had all our stock confiscated. So literally everything we had. And yeah, we thought that was going to kill our business. And I don't even know how much money that we didn't actually ever, but it was everything we had. And luckily we had enough repeat orders sort of moving for our
• 5:19
  Our delivery timelines were very, like they were two to ten days or something, but it always got there at like two days. So we were able to be like, no, it's still in time. It's just like seven days late. So that was the first one. And then the second one we found out that our Chinese factory were completely ripping us off and rebranding our bikinis, manufacturing our fabric.
• 5:39
  in with a different label and selling them in China. And when we went to take our stock back because we owned all our fabrics and we did all our negotiations in China ourselves, we didn't use an agent or anyone and great until a situation like that happens. And
• 5:55
  Craig went to try and take the stock back and they refused and locked him in a truck in the garage. It was a very scary situation, but he got out, our stock didn't, and again, we lost everything we had. So that was probably the bigger one because that was a few months after the first one and that was a bigger moment for us. Really scary and really vulnerable when you trust people.
• 6:18
  implicitly and they completely let you down. That was probably the worst one. And that was a huge, huge loss. I mean, again, because we did everything ourselves, we were able to buy new fabric pretty quickly from the Guangzhou fabric markets. And we had a few other factories that we were sampling with magically by some miracle because we were just wondering because they couldn't do the volume. Our current factory was not really, we didn't think they could get the volume we wanted. So we were looking at some point to go elsewhere and we had to really accelerate that.
• 6:47
  We didn't have a factory for about two weeks. So luckily our third-party facility that we ended up using, they had some stock. So we were able to not have too much of a lag by some miracle. Again, I'm pretty sure I was...
• 7:03
  emailing everyone 24 hours a day, not sleeping for weeks to make sure that every customer was spoken to that had an order coming and it was delayed and this. Yeah. So those were huge, huge lessons. And I would just say if you deal directly with manufacturers and suppliers to be really careful and maybe not as bullish as we were in doing that process, but it saved us money initially and then lost us a lot.
• 7:31
  That is so wild. I feel like your story is truly the definition or the playbook of like rollercoaster, you know, the highest of highs, but also like the lowest of lows that really could have stopped the business. Yeah. The ones where you're like, now when people are like, Oh, I'm worried about my business. I'm like, no, I'm like, trust me. If you've got the grit and the resilience, you're going to be fine.
• 7:58
  The only thing that would have killed us is if we stopped, literally. Like there is always a solution if you keep going. It's when you as the founder actually goes, then you're done. Nothing else will destroy you, you know. And that's, you know, money and stock and everything, you know. Like you can really find a way to get through things if you just don't give up. Like we proved that many times over the last two years. Oh, my gosh.
• 8:27
  I feel like, so this last question, you've already shared so many, but I'm going to ask it anyway, just in case there's another one in the bank. What is just a crazy story, good or bad, that you can share from your journey building triangle?
• 8:42
  One that has popped into my head, which is different, and probably I'm going to bring it up because I feel like we'll leave a manufacturing because that stresses me out even thinking about it. It was so many years ago and I'm like, oh, is when we were starting to really succeed and in our big 2015 year and Bloomberg, which was at the time because we travelled so much
• 9:04
  That was always on in every hotel, Bloomberg, like business, business week. It was like everything. It was like the Asian one, the American one. It was like when I hear it now, it's like soothing to my soul because it was the only constant in our lives for a couple of years and because we were just on the go. And they asked us to be on one of their episodes like and so we went to the show.
• 9:27
  in New York and we went into, and it was just the most surreal experience. I refused to go on air actually. I made Craig do it on his own. I was like, I'm not going on Bloomberg. Like, and it was just so surreal because it was something that we'd been watching every single day and watching, you know, huge business owners and like leaders of the world in business talking. And then Craig got to go on and talk. And so that was pretty crazy. That was like,
• 9:52
  That was the biggest acknowledgement of the American market, actually knowing who we were, because we were able to be on that show and
• 10:02
  and talk about the business to people that knew who we were. So that was insane. That was crazy. It was really crazy. And I had the most amazing food and snacks in the kitchen. I waited like outside and it was just, it was just, it was like, it was just insane. The simple pleasures. Yeah, that was my highlight of Bloomberg. Not anything else. It was that was it, the food. Yeah. Oh my God, I love that.
• 10:26
  It was cool. That was crazy. That was a crazy time that whole year. It'll be in the book. That's a crazy story. Like everything is crazy. Every week it was like, we didn't even have anyone to tell because we were like that. Like, you know, like, like there's so many stories like Kardashians and Beyonce and like just really wild stuff was happening to us. And we were just there going, OK, it's like, are we waking up soon from this? I don't know. It was crazy.
• 10:54
  That is crazy. Erin, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing all of your bits and pieces and learnings from along the way. I'm so grateful for your time. I know we've gone a little bit over. So thank you so much for coming on the show. For anyone who wants to reach out and learn more about your consultancy, where should they go?
• 11:12
  Yeah, so Instagram, obviously I'm on there. So check out my Instagram. And then my website is there. I am at capacity this year for most of my work, mainly because I'm working on my podcast, writing my book. So there will be, things are evolving so much this year for me. I will be available so much more as time goes on. So if you can't get in with me now and if you want to talk to me or sit with me or whatever it is, there will be ways. They are coming.
• 11:42
  Great. Amazing. We'll keep our eyes out for the book and for the podcast. Amazing. Thanks, Dane. Thank you.
• 11:52
  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.
• 12:17
  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.
• 12:40
  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.
• 12:55
  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.
• 13:20
  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.
• 13:42
  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.