Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Finding Product Market Fit on Facebook Marketplace to $3.6M in Sales, with 35mm Co’s Founder Madison Stefanis (Part 1)

Transcript

Finding Product Market Fit on Facebook Marketplace to $3.6M in Sales, with 35mm Co’s Founder Madison Stefanis (Part 1) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Madison Stephanas for Female Startup Club.
• 0:12
  Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. It's Dune here, your host and hype girl. It has been such joy seeing so many of you joining us in the Facebook group and posting your questions and helping each other and sharing your thoughts around building businesses. If you haven't joined us yet, please do. It's totally free. Find us on Facebook at Female Startup Club. It is a group. We would love to see you there.
• 0:41
  Okay, joining us today on the show is Maddie Stephanas. She is the founder of 35mm Co., which you might have seen recently on Shark Tank. I love this episode so much, and I say that all the time, but honestly, this is such a good one.
• 1:00
  Maddie started her business after spotting a gap in the market for vintage cameras. So she started flipping them online and after selling hundreds of thousands of dollars worth and never being able to keep up with the demand, she actually realized there was an opportunity to create her own product that she could scale. And so this episode is a great lesson in finding market fit before going all in.
• 1:26
  Okay, and just quickly, while I've got you here, I want to say a big, huge, full of love thank you to everyone who has been sharing their Spotify wrapped with us for this year. I can't even begin to tell you how grateful I am to see thousands of people with Female Startup Club in their top five shows or their number one listened to podcast for this year. It is just truly mind-blowing and I'm so grateful.
• 1:56
  And I just want to say thank you so much. Alrighty, let's get into today's episode. This is Maddie for Female Startup Club.
• 2:04
  Maddie, welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to speak with you. Me too. I'm so excited. I love this for us. Meeting you a couple of weeks ago at BitchCon, ended up going for drinks, ended up learning more about your story. And now we're here. I just love that. And I ended up learning a lot about your bowling skills. Oh my God, don't.
• 2:30
  Oh, man. I was so convinced in my natural abilities that I was going to fucking slay. And I can't even believe how bad I was. For everyone listening, I didn't hit a single pin. Like, not even one. I'm pretty sure every ball went down the gutter.
• 2:48
  Oh man. Yeah. Thanks for bringing that back up. You were really good. I was very impressed. I have that video of you absolutely crushing. So I think I kind of had an advantage. I don't drink. So I was completely sober whilst everyone else was having a good time bowling. Right. Yeah. And this was late. This was midnight. It was late. It was. Oh my God. That was so fun. We need to do that again. Loved that.
• 3:12
  Oh, way to start the episode here. I just have to bring it up. I had to remind you. Oh my God. I didn't need the reminder. No kidding. Okay. Oh my gosh. How's your day going? Where are you? What are you doing? Good, good. So I'm on the Gold Coast currently. I'm originally from Melbourne, moved up here about two years ago and I love it. It's beautiful here. It's a nice sunny day. The weather was definitely a big factor coming from Australia.
• 3:37
  freezing cold Melbourne winter and I moved right after lockdown so I was just looking for a little bit of a change. I love the Gold Coast. I'm a Queensland girl so I'm all about that vibe. It is beautiful. Let's jump into your story. Where do you like to get started? Where do you like to start this entrepreneurial moment that has led to 35mm Co.?
• 4:00
  I think it probably starts when I was quite young and there's never really been any sort of official business or knowledge or education behind it. And I don't come from a family of business owners, so no one in my family has a business background, but I was always the kid. I remember at Christmas time, I used to walk through the city. I was probably about eight years old and I just used to look at storefronts and go, what
• 4:22
  I could sell that product or they should do this or they can make that better. So I think that it's kind of been, you know, the typical nature versus nurture debate of has it always been something that's been a part of me without me actually knowing? So it kind of came to fruition when I was a kid.
• 4:37
  I love that. And then how did that kind of play out and evolve over time? Did you start kind of tinkering around making small businesses or did you kind of start selling, I don't know, stuff online? Like how did that kind of evolve over time? Totally. So I would sell anything that I could get my hands on primary school. I was selling like iPhone cases in the schoolyard and buying them off eBay.
• 5:00
  During high school, I sold pretty much anything I could find. So I used to sell clothes, sell accessories, sell shoes, anything at all. I did that during year 11 and 12. I was saving up for a car whilst I was working at the supermarket at the same time. And then 35 came about in my first year out of school. So I was in my first year of uni. And I think the most ironic part of me owning a photography business is that I don't come from a photography background. I actually didn't know
• 5:29
  a single thing about cameras. So how it originated is that I had an old vintage film camera that I was given for my birthday at probably about 15 years old and I had no idea how to use it.
• 5:41
  I thought it was cool. I thought I would use it. I put one roll of film through it and it came back terribly. So it sat in the corner for years. And then eventually that first year out of high school, I decided to list it on Facebook marketplace for some extra cash. I listed it for $50 and the comments started absolutely blowing up. People were bidding and the camera sold for $250. So I guess in my little business brain, that was sort of the catalyst for maybe this is a niche I could actually tap into.
• 6:10
  And so from there, were you like flipping cameras? Did that become the thing that you were flipping or you were still kind of selling other things or like you just sort of started zooming in on that? I started zooming in on cameras. So I was working at Mecca at the time, studying at uni and then just started flipping these vintage cameras. So I took the money from the first sale, bought another camera and then kept flipping them. And I think the market demand just drove up the price that I could actually sell them for because they were so popular at the time.
• 6:39
  And I think that the timing was incredibly lucky because film really was having a moment. Okay. And so how did you make, like, how much did you make flipping these cameras?
• 6:50
  Flipping the vintage, I think we figured out that I probably made around $450,000 solely from flipping vintage cameras. But it was a really labor-intensive, hard business model. So essentially what would happen is that I found contacts around the world. So I had like a guy in America, someone in Amsterdam who would scour all of these flea markets. They specialized in photography and they would test photography.
• 7:14
  the cameras, make sure they were working, put a roll of film through them because they're all vintage goods. You need to make sure they're still in working order. They would then ship it to me. And what I would have to do is I'd have to photograph every single individual camera, because even if a camera was the same model, chances are one of them had scratches or a small bit of paint had chipped off.
• 7:34
  So I was sitting there in my parents' living room with my light box, photographing every single e-com image, and then writing a product description for every model imaginable. So that was a really, really labor-intensive business model. Wow. This is like the true definition of a side hustle that is so bloody cool. $450,000. Like, what's the time span? What are we talking here? I started in...
• 8:00
  I started in February of 2020, I'd say probably about 12 months because then I started developing the Reloader, which is the camera we sell now. Oh my gosh. And how did you think to find these people who were scouring for you like worldwide? Was that just an easy, natural progression in your thoughts where you were like, yeah, I should get more people involved? Or did someone, you know, give you a tip? Like what happened there?
• 8:22
  I think that, to be honest, I'm pretty sure my own ambition just led me to think how much can I actually scale this. So I would message people on Instagram. I'd message guys on Facebook Marketplace, find people on Etsy, and then slowly start to build out these networks. And a lot of them were dead ends. But then I'd often find people who'd say, hey, I sell vintage cameras on the other side of the world. And because I was in Australia, I wasn't a threat to them, but they had excess stock or surplus that they could then pass on to me.
• 8:49
  Okay. And so during this time, it's kind of like demand is surging. You're able to, you know, get the product, but it sounds like you're not really having to market at all outside posting on Facebook and that's it. Were you having to do anything to market or it was pretty straightforward?
• 9:09
  It was pretty straightforward. It was very, very lean. So I started an Instagram page. And the way that page got traction is that essentially I set it up as sort of like a mood board. It was a very idealistic, this is what your film photos can look like. It was almost like the perfect Instagram grid. So it was very aspirational. So I started that Instagram page. I posted a giveaway. I thought, let's just give away one of the cameras, see if it gains any traction. And the account gained 5,000 followers overnight. So.
• 9:38
  So I think it was unheard of. I don't think we see that engagement at all in this day and age. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, so I think that was a really good kind of like signpost to make me think, okay, people want this product. Got it. Okay, tell me the evolution of how you go from realizing, yes, this is labor intensive. I'm not sure that this is kind of the best way to be building this. I want to start a business and like turn this into something.
• 10:07
  It really came from customer feedback. I think the hardest part was that the vintage cameras were in such high demand that the RRP was too high for most people to purchase. So vintage cameras were selling for between $200 and $300 for a single camera.
• 10:22
  And the hardest part was that I was mainly selling point and shoots, which are quite basic and easy to use. But even then, they did have several settings on them. And there was this real customer learning and customer education process that was almost too complex for your typical everyday disposable camera user.
• 10:39
  Right. So I'm trying to understand the next piece of the puzzle of being like, I'm going to go all in and develop my own camera based on this feedback, based on what I'm seeing, based on the fact that I know it's a little bit tricky. What's that light bulb moment to being like, I'm going to start a business and make my own cameras? There's a couple of reasons. So I'm going to throw them all together. Essentially,
• 11:03
  People were using disposable film cameras that were single use. And that was a gap in the market that I felt I could fill by bringing out a reusable camera. So that was one of the factors. The second was that every time I would restock the vintage, they would sell out instantly. I couldn't keep them in stock. So the demand outweighed the supply of vintage goods.
• 11:24
  Thirdly, I think that I've always grown up in an environment where my mom has been so incredibly supportive of anything I pursue. I think it comes back to that nature versus nurture thing. I love business and I love paving my own way, doing my own thing. I don't really like being told what to do. So in any circumstance, if I can forge a career or do something off my own back, I will. So I think that those three things kind of gave me the confidence to go out and develop a camera.
• 11:49
  myself, but it did feel like this really impossible hurdle, especially not coming from a photography background. I think that I just saw the market opportunity and the possibility of what it could be. And that's how it came to fruition.
• 12:01
  And we hear this on the show as well a lot. It's kind of like the less you know, almost the better. Because you're kind of entering this photography industry, but you're kind of somewhat naive about how photography works and cameras actually work and that kind of thing, you're able to approach things with a very different perspective that just pushes you forward instead of being blocked by knowing too much information, which I absolutely love.
• 12:26
  What was the manufacturing piece of that like? How long did it take you to find a factory? How did you find a factory? What was your process? And yeah, just that general experience. Yeah.
• 12:35
  Manufacturing took probably around 12 months. So I was really lucky. I had a friend of a friend who popped me onto a sourcing agent in China. And so what we did was I kind of vetted all of the major camera manufacturers across China, Japan, there's surprisingly not that many in the world. It's a really small niche. And so sampled anything and everything. Went to all these different factories, got samples sent over. Obviously, we're in the middle of COVID. We're in lockdown. Yeah.
• 13:04
  And just sat on it, tested them out. The biggest part was testing the product. So I think that I probably put about 20 rolls of film through the camera we sell now before actually deciding, yes, I want to take this to market because it had to be something that worked.
• 13:18
  During that time, are you doing anything to start building the actual brand? And actually, just to step back to the Facebook marketplace situation, you're obviously, or not even obviously, you're probably not capturing emails at that time, right? You're just transacting through Facebook. You don't need anyone's details. So what do you do?
• 13:37
  When you kind of start this process of, yep, I'm going to start a brand, I'm actually going to turn this into a business, are you also taking steps on the side to put up a website or capture leads or talk about it on Facebook Marketplace or something like that?
• 13:52
  I definitely didn't take advantage of it as much as I should have. So there was a website for the vintage cameras and essentially it was a scarcity business model. Those cameras would restock every week and I would capture emails from customers who purchased, but there was no sort of email list set up. I don't even think we had a pop-up for people to subscribe to the mailing list, EDMs weren't being sent. So I didn't capitalize on that whatsoever. How I brought the Reloader to market was seven days before it launched, I essentially flipped all of the branding of 35mm Co.
• 14:22
  So we used to look very different visually. It was quite old school, quite vintage. And then I kind of flipped it to this really fun e-commerce brand. The logo's pink and it was all really colorful. And I think that was quite a shock to people because it really piqued their curiosity. They were like, what's going on here? This brand has completely changed its identity. And so I just teased seven days out.
• 14:45
  Wow. Okay. So that's the strategy. You're teasing it seven days out. What happens when you launch? Do you just put it up on the website and these people who know to come back to you every week to check for your deals or what offerings you have are just basically like, yep, cool. There's this one camera now and that's it.
• 15:06
  Yeah, I think we were really lucky. Like there was such a cult following to that Instagram account. Right. We actually looked at this the other day. So we did capture email signups in the seven days before the Reloader launch. So we did sign up to launch like a lead generation campaign.
• 15:21
  And I'm pretty sure we had something like 4,000 signups, which is for a business that hadn't even properly launched yet was pretty amazing. So it was really interesting to look back and see those metrics. But I think we need to talk about TikTok as well, because that was quite a vital player in this entire launch. So the vintage cameras were being posted to TikTok, which helped drive a lot of the organic growth.
• 15:43
  marketing of the product. And then I built quite a good following on the business account on TikTok, which allowed me to really easily transition into the reloader seven days prior to launch. Okay, got it. So how many people had you built on the TikTok account at that point? I'd say probably about 60,000. Okay. All right. All right. All right. So you've built this full audience on TikTok and on Instagram. You've got this list going and then you're about to put it live. What happens
• 16:13
  It went absolutely crazy. I've never, I don't even think I expected it. So many people on the website, so many sales. I thought that our initial stock shipment was going to last us until Christmas. We launched in August and two weeks later we were completely sold out. How many units is that? We had 2,000.
• 16:32
  Oh, my God. I actually missed asking you about the money piece of this. So when you were kind of in that process of being like, cool, I'm going to switch from Facebook Marketplace vintage cameras over to 35mm Co., what was your investment into actually developing the product and getting your first batch of inventory up?
• 16:50
  My investment, so I invested everything that I had in the 35mm code bank account at the time. So when I was selling the vintage cameras, I wasn't personally pulling from that money. I was just building up cash flow. So I think that was probably, I'd say at the time I maybe had like 35 grand in the account. And then I pulled all of my personal savings, which was 50 grand. So I'd worked...
• 17:12
  at the supermarket from the age of 15. I'd worked at Mecca. I'd sold anything I could get my hands on. So I poured all of my savings into it. My bank account was literally drained to $0. Oh my gosh. Okay. Got it. So about 85 grand is going into this. You sell out the 2000 units in two weeks. What do you then do? Because obviously there's huge demand. You've kind of found product
• 17:41
  Yeah, so this was scary territory for me. It was almost like we'd had this euphoric, incredible launch. And then I just totally had a meltdown because I thought my business was over. Everyone was in my ear saying, you're not going to have stock for Q4. You're in e-commerce. This is the biggest time of the year. And our manufacturing lead time is probably around five weeks plus C-freight, four weeks.
• 18:07
  So it wasn't looking good. And I genuinely thought the business was over. So we ended up playing with the manufacturer, getting a really quick turnaround for stock. We had to pay the entire shipment upfront. So usually you pay a deposit for manufacturing. We had to pay this upfront, guarantee fast turnaround. And then we air freighted all of the stock, which was the biggest business lesson for me.
• 18:31
  business lesson as in never doing it again or? Yes, never doing it again. Really, really expensive, especially off the back of the pandemic. It was at a time where air freight was really costly and it definitely hurt our bottom line. Our sales were amazing that Christmas, but I don't know that we actually made any money off the back of it because that air freight hindered us so badly. What's like an example of what it costs to ship like via sea versus air?
• 18:58
  Just having a think, I think especially because prices were so inflated at that time, I know that we span our air freight bill was around $50,000. Oh my gosh. And we probably could have paid less than a third of that by sea. Right. Okay, got it.
• 19:13
  And so during this time, kind of like in that first, let's say 12 months of business, 18 months of business, is it just very much kind of you posting on social and an organic approach or when do kind of like other strategies enter the scene? Are you running paid ads? Are you kind of leveraging PR influences? What are the kind of biggest strategies at play that you're kind of using in that first year, year and a half? Yeah.
• 19:39
  Paid ads came onto the scene right after I launched the Reloader. So that was really great, especially for our first Christmas. That was kind of like my first experience with paid media. And then PR came into play probably around six months later. So I'd never had any sort of PR exposure as a founder or...
• 19:58
  for the brand. And I always wanted to sit behind the brand as a founder. I'm naturally quite introverted and I didn't want to be the face of 35, but I think that I very quickly learned that given my age, it was a really good PR piece to play.
• 20:14
  Something that I find interesting is like when it comes to paid ads, I think a lot of people jump straight into, you know, wanting to do ads, but actually getting product market fit and finding your kind of messaging fit online and then using ads to amplify and highlight what's actually already working versus blowing money on things that actually you might not have figured out yet and aren't working. When you started running your ads,
• 20:41
  What was your approach? Did you do it yourself? Did you hire someone? Did you hire an agency? And kind of what was that experience like? I went straight to an agency. So I know the basics of paid media, but it's not something that I wanted to spend my time on. I love organic marketing. I love campaigns and I love product design. So that was not my area of expertise. And luckily I was fortunate enough that the business was in a position where we could facilitate paying a weekly retainer for someone else to do our ads.
• 21:08
  And in the beginning, you know, what kind of budget did you start with spending on ads? I think we were probably spending maybe like $1,000 a week, $1,500 a week. And like, did it work from the get-go? Yes, it worked really, really well. I think we were super lucky that it's a product that translated really well into paid advertising, particularly as a Christmas gift, because we said as a $99 product, it works really well for gift giving. Right.
• 21:38
  Okay. Yeah, absolutely. I want to talk more about kind of how, because you're probably two years into the journey at this point, right? You're two years into the journey. I think I read somewhere you're kind of close to doing 4 million in sales, lifetime sales, or somewhere around that kind of number. You've been on Shark Tank. What's the lead up to Shark Tank? How did that happen? Yeah.
• 22:04
  I think Shark Tank is really interesting to speak about because if we go back to, I'm quite, I'm very introverted. I wouldn't even say quite. I would say I'm very introverted. I really, really struggled with public speaking in high school to the point where I couldn't stand up and do my year 12 assessment in front of the class. So that was a really, really hard time in my life. And I guess in this journey, and so ironic that I actually stood up and did it on Shark Tank. You did amazing. Thank you.
• 22:33
  I applied to go on the show and I didn't even really do it with any sort of intention of actually going ahead with it. I just saw on LinkedIn, I think Jane posted saying that Shark Tank was returning. And I thought, you know what, let's just give it a shot and apply. I think I more so just wanted to see if I'd actually get through. And I received a call from a producer the next day, had a couple of Zoom calls.
• 22:56
  I had to present a business plan, which I didn't have. We're a very early stage startup. I had no sort of formal business plan. So I threw together a document that I hope never sees the light of day. It was absolutely shocking. And yeah, I got asked to go on the show. And it took me so long to decide whether I actually wanted to do it. I think I ummed and ah'd because I'd never really expected to go on.
• 23:20
  It's interesting that you say, you know, you're really introvert, you struggle with public speaking, but then you go forward and do this huge thing that I can only imagine is such a challenge to mentally work through.
• 23:35
  What kind of tips can you give for anyone, you know, founders who are pitching at award competitions or grant competitions and kind of putting themselves out there? Because similarly to you, even though I like present as an extrovert, I am absolutely introvert. I can't believe that I have a podcast. I am so shy and so nervous all the time. And talking to me like publicly, especially before I started and being like on video and things like that was like...
• 24:03
  A hell no. It was an absolute hell no. And so I really want to highlight to everyone that, like, it is a skill that you can kind of force yourself into being okay at. You can get good at it even. And share any kind of tips or learnings that you had while you were going through that experience. Completely. Absolutely.
• 24:23
  I feel like I've done everything under the sun. Like I've listened to podcasts about public speaking. I remember my first ever podcast that I did, I was absolutely terrified. I had no idea how to speak, no idea how to present myself. And I still don't. It'll always be a work in progress. But I would listen to tips on how to speak in front of an audience sometimes.
• 24:44
  what to do with your body language. I would listen to a lot of other founders speaking. And I think the one thing that really shone through was the element of storytelling that really engaged the listener and actually allowed your business and your journey to translate in a really authentic way. So I'd say my biggest tip is to get really clear on your story and your journey and, um,
• 25:06
  even creating a document with common questions about your business that you know you just need to actually be able to pop into sentences and understand how to convey that to an audience, I think that's a really good way to go about it.
• 25:18
  I love that tip. And I absolutely have the same kind of strategy. We kind of have this document that, you know, if an interviewer reaches out for a publication, like an editor or something like that, or a podcaster or whatever it might be, we have kind of like a bank of all the kind of questions that were always asked so that we can use that as a base for things. But what it actually does is when you're forced to sit there and think about it and just write it out for yourself, you kind of develop that kind of,
• 25:48
  natural flow of storytelling. And I think over time, for me personally, going through those processes of keeping like notes of how I would answer something, even if it was in a written interview, even if it wasn't public speaking, and then saying it out loud over and over and over again, that kind of gets you into a bit of a groove. And I think it's such a great tip. I love that you brought that up.
• 26:10
  Going back to Shark Tank, I feel like I digressed a little bit there. You aired, the episode was amazing. I think I saw you got a deal for $300,000. You sold 17.5% of your company. I know that all the sharks are still in this due diligence phase at the moment. But I want to know, what has the impact been since it went live? Like, what happened that night, for example, when the episode was going on? And then what happened after?
• 26:37
  I'll speak about it in two different frameworks. That night when it aired, because I'm sure you want to know about sales. That's exactly what I want to know about. I know what you're asking. When it aired on television, we didn't see a huge uplift in sales. And that really didn't surprise me given the demographic that watches free to air television. I had to download the 10 play app to be able to actually view it. I don't think I have free to air.
• 27:00
  On my TV. I don't either. I watched it at Sarah's house. Yes. And we sell a Gen Z product, so that didn't come as a surprise to me. Okay. The sense of community work.
• 27:14
  that I experienced in the week leading up to Shark Tank, because we went really, really hard on the promo of it across socials, was incredible. Just messages from people saying, I bought a vintage camera off you two years ago. This is so crazy and I couldn't believe it. So that was really lovely just seeing. I think it's really hard. You do need to step back and look at the business.
• 27:35
  almost as an outsider when you're so in the business every single day, you don't see how many customers love the brand, love the product. So that was really lovely. In terms of sales, once we started sharing the Shark Tank clips to social media, they went crazy on TikTok and that really did translate into plenty of sales.
• 27:54
  Oh my gosh, how exciting. I feel like as well, Shark Tank is just such a great platform for ongoing PR message that comes out. I've seen the headlines about your brand because of the Shark Tank moment since then, which is very, very cool to see. How have you been preparing for Black Friday? It's next week. This will probably air after Black Friday, but how have you been preparing and what tips do you have for founders that you've learned this time around?
• 28:24
  And Shark Tank was actually a big key player in our Black Friday strategy. So that was a really good brand awareness piece, particularly on organic socials. All of that website traffic that we received from the videos going viral has obviously been now retargeted. So we actually went live. I'm having a look at my calendar. We probably went live about a week ago. So we went live really, really early. I think that Black Friday is becoming so competitive. Every second brand has been on sale for weeks now.
• 28:52
  So that was really a huge prep strategy for us. We did a lot of lead generation, a lot of... We actually implemented quite a few email flows around capturing customers in our database who had never purchased before. So we had quite a few sitting there who had been signed up and received all our emails, but they hadn't been engaged.
• 29:10
  So we kind of segmented them out and did a lot of testing around that segment and seeing what sort of discounts we could offer them to convert them into customers or even clear out the database. I don't think that that's a bad thing saying to people, if you don't want to be here, we respect that. Here's your opportunity to opt out. And so what's an example of a campaign that you tested and it worked getting those people to convert customers?
• 29:35
  We ran one recently, we sent out a flow. So we essentially said, hey, we've seen you've been in the database for a while. Here's a little refresher on what we sell, why you might like it. Here's an extra discount for you. And it converted really well. It was really, really good. So that just brought a whole lot of unengaged people back into obviously our engaged pool of customers. Another campaign that we did, we actually only sent this out last week. We sent out an email with the subject line saying, we're hiring.
• 30:04
  And when you click into the email, it's a job ad, but it's a job ad for our Black Friday sale. So it says we're hiring savvy shoppers, bargain hunters, memory makers. And the click through rate for that email was probably one of the best I've ever seen. And we had so many customers messaging us, my friends texting me saying, are you hiring? So it was one that worked really, really well. Oh, I love that. That's so cool. That's a great idea.
• 30:30
  You know how you were saying Black Friday is getting earlier and earlier every year? I feel the same. I feel like we're in this space of saturation from October onwards right through to Christmas. How do you imagine we... How does this keep going every year? Is every brand just on sale all the time? To me, it just feels like this spiral. And I'm like, it's not Black Friday anymore.
• 30:54
  We're like pre-Halloween. What's happening? Yeah, completely. And I feel like I really struggle with this as well because obviously I don't quite understand where the future of e-commerce is heading with this sale period. Like, are we just going to be on sale for the entire of Q4? And it's really kind of like that moral battle as a business owner of we can hold our ground and not go on sale, but are we losing customers if we don't follow everyone else in the e-commerce space? So I really don't know what to expect or how it'll pan out over the next few years.
• 31:25
  What are other founders that you know kind of saying or how are they thinking about this? I think that people are approaching it from more of a stance of creating a really strong brand identity where customers aren't waiting for you to go on sale. I think that you do need to go on sale at some stage in Q4, but whether that's for a shorter period of time or at a...
• 31:46
  heavier discount within a 48-hour timeframe rather than being on sale for weeks on end. It just depends on how strong your brand identity is, how loyal your community is, and how quickly you think you can convert your following into customers. Yeah, that's really interesting. Being very clear about, you know, like, we have two sales a year. It's this day and this day, and that is absolutely it. You will never get, like, a sale email from us. But that's a big, like...
• 32:12
  line to draw in the sand kind of thing. Completely. I think one brand that does it really well is, I don't know if they actually partake in sales, I'm not sure, but Ultraviolet, the sunscreen brand. So they have their SPF BFF day. I think that's what it's called. And it happens maybe bi-annually and it's buy one, get one free. I always hold out for that sale. Always. Whenever it goes live, I always stock up on sunscreen. It is the best promotion and...
• 32:38
  Obviously, I don't know how their business works, but I'd assume that it works incredibly well for them. They have such a loyal cult following. So I really like that idea for their niche.
• 32:46
  I really like that too. And it also makes me think it's a smart strategy to create your own to sales day of the year, instead of kind of fitting in with everyone else and having to compete with a saturated ad space and, you know, all the kind of hurdles that come with scaling ads in a busy time. I love that. That's such a great idea. It's really clever how they can follow their own calendar.
• 33:10
  Something I wanted to ask you about was, I think you might have mentioned it in the Shark Tank episode, is around copycats and what your experience has been with people popping up, copying your brand and copying kind of things that you're doing and how you cope with it mentally. I think it used to bother me at the start. I think that it bothers every early stage founder when your business is your baby and you know how hard you've worked for it. We get ripped off all
• 33:38
  I could count all the brands on my hand who are copying us and have our website copy on their website to the point where they've forgotten to remove 35mm Co. from the description and swap it over to their brand name. It's shocking. It's just terrible. But I think that...
• 33:53
  it really doesn't bother me maybe as much as it should because I am just so focused on moving forward and progressing with 35mm Co. I think that we're really lucky that we were early to market, if not first to market, and so customers do look to us as a market leader and everyone who's replicated us
• 34:10
  hasn't quite got it right. I just think the quality of products just doesn't translate. And so I'm not as worried about it right now as I should be. Maybe as we continue to grow, it will bother me more. But for now, I'm happy to just hold tight. Have you ever had any experiences where like you've met one of those founders in real life and called it out? I actually met someone at an event probably about a year ago. And I
• 34:39
  They were lovely. They congratulated me on the business and they were super, super nice. And they've gone and started the same business and taken all of our copy from the website. And I know them. I know who they are. But no, I would never call anyone out. It's just not in my best interests. And to be honest, I just really don't care.
• 34:59
  Yeah. Still a really shit thing to, to have, you know, in your soul and in your stomach being like, but why not the fun part of business? It's not the fun part of business. Yeah. And I think as well, like, especially when you're a solo founder and you're kind of sitting there and you see something like that and you're like, man, what the heck do something different? Yeah. Yeah. It's not worth your time. I think the best thing you can do is keep moving forward.
• 35:25
  Yep, absolutely. We had some questions from our audience that I want to bring up. First is from Annalise and she's asking, how do you create your social media content strategy in a way that relates to your target audience interests? And second of all, how do you have any tips on how to be consistent with your social? I think in the early stages, there was a lot of
• 35:51
  tweaking. Like there was a lot of testing, particularly on TikTok. When I started posting the cameras, I did a heap of market research. I searched up the hashtag film camera on TikTok, saw what else was happening in the space and videos were performing really, really well. So essentially I would replicate those videos with the reloader camera. So I think do market research, see what's happening. It is important to keep on top of TikTok trends.
• 36:16
  I don't think trends should underpin your entire brand identity. You do need to come up with concepts yourself and create a following that loves you for your product and what you're sharing, not just for following trends. But in terms of consistency, I would put content first and foremost. Content is king. If you're a solo founder and you are...
• 36:36
  A one-person team doing it by yourself, I would put content first and foremost. Spend all of your time creating videos, chasing organic reach. I think that it is so, so important. And it's the easiest and quickest way to learn what will work for your product and what won't. Oh, my gosh. I couldn't agree more. And I just want to go back to what I was saying before when it comes to ads. It's like...
• 36:56
  Everyone should be focusing on content first, finding messaging that hits and finding like the audience that resonates with you and then amplify with other things like ads and PR and influences and whatever. But first test and find that kind of messaging market fit with people who are going to care about what you're doing, you know, in the world, online, whatever. Yeah.
• 37:18
  And then amplify. Completely. Otherwise, you're just a deer in headlights. Like you don't understand your product and your audience and how you can actually make that work from a paid perspective. Absolutely. Thank you for that. Second question from the audience. Sonia is asking, how did you make it cool and how did you know it would resonate with your audience?
• 37:40
  I really like this question because it's quite funny. I find that 35mm Co's brand identity doesn't align with my own. I'd say that my personal style and, I guess, aesthetic is very different to the 35 brand. But it was carefully curated. I grew up at a time where brands like Frank Body were all the rave. Like, I was that 13-year-old buying my coffee scrub thinking it was the coolest e-commerce brand to hit Instagram. And so I think that...
• 38:06
  I just felt like I kind of observed and seen all these other brands who were really like the foundations of e-com doing really well and creating that strong brand identity. So I think that that's how I knew it would resonate. I really came at it from a Gen Z standpoint and I wanted it to be this fun, colorful brand. I also wanted to make sure that the product was visually engaging. So it needed to be bright and needed to be colorful so that it would stand out on social media.
• 38:33
  Oh, 100%. Great learning there. You want your brand to pop on social media if you're going to be a social media first company. I want to wrap up the episode with this final question. And then we jump into the six quick questions. If you were starting a business tomorrow, bootstrapped again, but knowing what you know now, when it comes to things like manufacturing, when it comes to things like e-commerce or retail or content or whatever it is,
• 39:00
  What would you do to get your first 1,000 true fans? Post a TikTok. I would start from day one and really authentically, I would put myself behind the camera, which is something I never wanted to do, but I would actually...
• 39:17
  be a human being telling a story and showing people how I'm starting and scaling this brand. I follow someone on TikTok currently who he's starting a skincare brand. I think he's from the UK and he's documented every single part of the process from the product design to the sampling. And it's so engaging. I love seeing his videos and I love seeing the progression of his brand. So that's what I would do.
• 39:37
  Oh my gosh. Do you remember what his handle is? We need to tag him in the show notes so we can get everyone to help. What's his name? I think his name's Ben and is it Clubhouse Skin maybe? Ben Clubhouse Skin. Yes. It's really cool. It's a really cool product. Amazing. Thank you. I'm going to link him in the show notes for anyone who wants to check him out. That's so cool.
• 40:01
  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.
• 40:25
  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.
• 40:48
  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.