Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Greatest Hits: Ghia founder Melanie Masarin on how she launched a wickedly cool booze-free beverage that’s on the tip of everyone’s tongue

Transcript

Greatest Hits: Ghia founder Melanie Masarin on how she launched a wickedly cool booze-free beverage that’s on the tip of everyone’s tongue · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  Hey everyone, just wanted to let you know that I'm taking a quick and much needed break. And that means for today's show, we're going back to the archives from 2020 to bring you one of our favorite and most popular episodes. Happy listening. This is Melanie Massarin for Female Startup Club.
• 0:27
  Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Female Startup Club. I'm your host, Doon Roisin, and joining me on the show today is Melanie Massarin, founder of the spirited, booze-free brand, Gia. A Glossier alum, Melanie launched her brand earlier this year during the pandemic, and it's been on the tip of everyone's tongue ever since. It's been on the tip of everyone's tongue ever since.
• 0:48
  We talk about the light bulb moment she decided she was going to launch an aperitif, what actually happens in the lead up to a launch, the steps to doing a friends and family round and how her special vision was brought to life through branding and language. With a super cute background story that involves Italy, her grandmother and all the good things in life, Gia has quickly grown into a brand that's needed in our social lives probably now more than ever.
• 1:12
  And while I've got you here, you know how much I love to harp on about our rating and reviews. If you've been loving the podcast and it's inspired you in some way, please do rate and review in the iTunes app so other ears can find us. Let's jump into this episode. This is Melanie for Female Startup Club. Melanie, hey, thanks so much for being on Female Startup Club today. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited.
• 1:37
  Me too. I'm super excited. Do you want to start by giving us a quick overview of what gear is and who it's for?
• 1:46
  Of course. So Ghia was really designed to be for everyone, but we're a non-alcoholic aperitif inspired by the Mediterranean and aperitivo culture. We have 0.0% alcohol in our drink and no sugar added, which is very different from most aperitifs, but the tasting notes are very similar. It's a bitter drink that is very adult, really prepares your palate for kind of that
• 2:14
  dinner or, you know, it's really good from sunset to sunrise. And it's made entirely of botanical extracts.
• 2:23
  It sounds so delicious. And my favorite drink of the moment is Aperol. And I was reading it's quite similar in terms of flavorings to that. So I'm so excited to try it and give it a whirl. We usually start by going back to your life before Ghia and what you were doing in your career and just generally in life that inspired you to launch your own business and jump on the entrepreneurial train. Yeah.
• 2:49
  For sure. So I actually grew up in France and I moved to the U.S. to go to college. So I went to Brown and at Brown, I was actually working for dining services because I needed a job on campus and they were one of the biggest employers of students on campus. And I guess that's sort of where I got my first experience working in hospitality.
• 3:10
  I graduated and I worked in finance for a couple of years at Goldman Sachs, which was a great experience, but not for me at all. And I ended up working in retail for a little bit at American Eagle and was really interested in food and the supply chain of food in the United States. You know why a lot of people had food.
• 3:31
  food issues, food deserts, all of that. And I ended up being put in touch with the CEO of a restaurant group in New York called Dig In that really wanted to make from-the-table food more affordable to people. And I ended up joining their team and staying there for a few years. There were six restaurants when I joined, and I think there were about 20 when I left. So we worked really hard for this few years and it was an incredible experience.
• 4:00
  I subsequently left to join the team at Glossier, which is a beauty brand that was born on the Internet and led by Emily Weiss. And at that time, Glossier was really trying to figure out, you know, what it meant for them to be an Internet brand. And there was really a need for more engagement with the brand and a demand for more engagement with the brand from their consumers.
• 4:22
  And so I joined in and they asked me, what should we do with retail? Everybody expects that we're going to open all these stores. We don't really want to do that. And so from there, we started really defining that third dimension of the Grandier brand with really experiential stores in different cities that would really cater to their local audience and would be like a trip every single time. So a different experience, a little bit actually like you would design a restaurant group. They're not all the same. They're...
• 4:52
  They're all hyper local and they all really listen to their customers and they're all a very different experience. So we designed Glossier Retail that way. And I ended up leaving in December 2018, not really knowing what I wanted to do, but I knew that I wanted to get back into food. I cook a lot and it's really kind of where my passion lies.
• 5:18
  but I knew I didn't want to open a restaurant. I'm not a chef. And so I had been kind of thinking about
• 5:24
  how to bring all these passions together and really creating these experiences. And I grew up spending every summer by the Mediterranean. My grandmother was a host, I would say the host was the most. And I learned a lot from her. And she would always make these incredible drinks, whether it was limoncello, which is basically 50% sugar and 50% alcohol, or much lower ABV, hercure royals and other things. She would dilute before dinner.
• 5:53
  I was very inspired by the ways that we gather in Europe. And I had not been drinking for a few years because I actually was, you know, as soon as I moved to the United States, I started to really have stomach issues and I didn't really know where they were coming from. And which is probably why I was always gravitating towards food so much. It's like, I was really trying to understand. Sometimes you think you keep a very healthy lifestyle and you still have a lot of pain. And I was hearing so many of my friends saying they had IBS and I was just,
• 6:23
  always trying to figure out what it was about our lifestyle and about, you know, the food that we ate that made us feel this way. And one of the triggers I realized was alcohol. It was very clear to me that if I drink alcohol, I feel...
• 6:39
  very foggy the following day and I operate that maybe 60 or 70% capacity. And so I had really early on that kind of weaned myself off of booze first on and off. And then just, I couldn't tell you when I stopped drinking, but it just never felt like worth it to have another drink. So it's been a few years now of not drinking and that,
• 6:59
  For a few years, it was something that I always had to justify. I had to explain myself all the time and I had to hear people say, oh, you're boring. You're no fun. You come on, just have one or she doesn't drink.
• 7:15
  a little bit annoying, obviously. And then I realized the past few years that more and more of my friends, more and more of the people that I consider to be fun, but also very high-functioning individuals were not drinking. And it really made me think about how there just needs to be better options. That paired with the fact that... And the pandemic really unveiled the
• 7:38
  some of these issues, but how difficult it is to run a restaurant today. If 66% of millennials, I think the studies say, are trying to get down on their drinking, then that makes it really hard financially for restaurants to stay in business. And the pandemic really uncovered that this year. So I really wanted to create a product that would also work in a hospitality setting because the number one tenant for our brand is inclusivity. And
• 8:06
  If we're telling you that you can only enjoy, you know, Ghia or another drink from the comfort of your home, then it's not truly inclusive. I wanted to be able to go out to dinner and really participate, order a drink that would make me feel like I was fully included in the conversation and social setting, even if it didn't have alcohol in it.
• 8:26
  Yeah, I can't tell you how many times my husband and I, or even my friends and I have spoken about like, what do you just drink at the bar when you don't want to drink? Or even, you know, friends who are pregnant. My best friend just had a baby and it was a conversation all throughout her pregnancy because of course she wanted to be social and she wanted to be included and involved. But it's such a, there's just no real, I mean, there are coming onto the market now new, new options, but it just felt like,
• 8:54
  There was no one really ticking the box in a serious way that people were excited about. I mean, obviously you're either like, oh, you know, I don't want to drink a soda because it's packed with sugar and it's not good for you anyway. So like, what's the point? I may as well just drink water, which then you're like, oh, well, this is boring. Yeah.
• 9:13
  For sure. And, you know, it's interesting, actually, because the UK is where all these brands really started, I think, because drinking is so ingrained in the culture with pop culture and the drinks starting even before dinner. Yeah.
• 9:25
  I would have thought that it would be the last country to maybe move to fully non-alcoholic beverages. And actually, they were really the leader with, I think there's something like over 100 brands that have started over the past few years. So that was kind of our case study. Yeah. That's crazy. Wow. How interesting. I definitely would never have picked the UK either. That's really, really cool.
• 9:48
  And so you've kind of got these different things going on. You're feeling that you want to stick within hospitality. You're interested in food. What's the light bulb moment? When were you like, aha, I've got it. I know what I'm going to do. So I think the light bulb moment really happened when I stopped putting pressure on trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. So I started consulting for a number of brands. It was great. I had just left Glossier, so I was very in demand. A lot of people really liked the Glossier retail experience and a lot of
• 10:17
  newer brands were wondering, you know, the same questions. How do we create this third dimension? What does it look like for us from a brand experience standpoint? And so I had a lot of clients and it really allowed me to breathe for a minute and say, you know, I really want the next thing to be the thing. So I'm not going to put pressure on it.
• 10:37
  I also, by the way, was not wed to the idea of starting my own company. That felt very scary. But I actually ended up going on a trip to Italy, which is just my favorite place in the world. And like many other people. And it's on this trip that I realized that I wanted to do this because, you know, we were...
• 10:57
  Our days were guided by looking at design. We were there for design week and then figuring out where we were going to eat and what we were going to eat, which is pretty much like the perfect trip in my book. And, you know, I was with some friends and they were wondering if we should get an extra order of pasta or not. And I was like, well, of course, we must take the extra order of pasta. And they were like, well, yeah, but we already have pasta for lunch, blah, blah, blah.
• 11:23
  I was like, yeah, but you're also on your fourth Aperol spritz. So that's so much worse than the pasta. And we kind of started, you know, talking, they work in food. We started having this conversation about what we eat versus what we drink and how this kind of health and wellness movement has really, you know, impacted our plate and how we think about food on the everyday. And it's had a really positive change.
• 11:46
  but it just hasn't moved at all to the drink. Alcohol brands don't even have to disclose what's in it. You only have to say it's X percent of alcohol, but you don't have to say what the ingredients are. You don't have to say what the sugar content is. There's just nothing is disclosed. They don't even have to label. That's why you can have these really pretty bottles and you're subjected to a completely different set of standards when you produce non-alcoholic drinks. So,
• 12:14
  I thought that was interesting. And we started talking about it. And that's when it hit me. And he said, you have to do this. And we talked a lot about the social stigma, you know, how people say a real drink. And to me, a real drink is a drink that has real ingredients. But for a lot of people, a real drink is a drink that has alcohol in it. And so I wanted to create a real drink that would not be about buzzing you, but that would be a better for you drink that would not though be branded as healthy. I think it was really about just...
• 12:44
  an invitation. And we always say Gia is an invitation because it's really the idea of participation. It's like, if you have a Gia in your hand, you don't need the alcohol, but it's just a kind of a good decision for your body. And in terms of, I would say vibe, you know, we wanted it to be just as fun, if not more fun. It's about that extra connection.
• 13:05
  Yeah, and I definitely feel that through all of your branding and tone of voice, which I definitely want to get to. But I want to stick with where you are now in the process. You have that meeting, you're over lunch in Italy, enjoying some moments with friends and the moment sparks where you've got this idea. Yeah.
• 13:25
  How do you start building a brand? Do you have to think about, you know, how much money you're going to invest, what your personal savings commitment is going to be, what it's going to be called? How did it develop after that moment?
• 13:38
  For sure. Well, first of all, I was also really busy with clients. And so I started doing research slowly but surely as if it was another project. So I think at the time I had six clients that I was either designing stores for or, you know, helping with some strategy for retail or even just doing kind of other projects. And so I started looking into it and, you know, found this case study of the UK and how there were all these brands there.
• 14:08
  I started ordering a number of bottles to my mom's house in France because they wouldn't deliver to the U.S. and have her ship them over here. And I realized the opportunity is huge. And so I started kind of asking people about it, asking, I have a lot of friends who are chefs. What do you think of this? And, you know, they really needed to be convinced by the product because a lot of...
• 14:29
  There's a lot of craft in alcohol and there's a lot of tradition. And so how do you break away from that in a way? They also were not convinced that they could charge as much as alcohol. So I realized one of the challenges was, you know, figuring out a drink that would be as credible to the food industry as an alcoholic drink. And then from a consumer standpoint, also really convincing, you know, chefs or the people that we would sell the drink to and bars to,
• 14:55
  that this was not trying to downsell from an alcoholic drink, but rather really catering to an audience that was trying to drink less. And there were all these surveys that had started coming out about people trying to cut down on their drinking. And even anecdotally, I was really seeing it. People not wanting to go to dinner on a Tuesday because they didn't want to drink, which these things, you know, don't have to be exclusive. So from there, it was a lot of research and it was a lot of...
• 15:25
  you know, mood boarding, I'm a very visual person. And so I wanted to really get a sense for what the challenge would be visually. And the challenge was, you know, you have all of these labeling requirements for the bottle. You want a bottle that will stand on its own in the shelf, but you also want a drink that's recognizable when it's in the glass. You
• 15:49
  there's nothing natural about it. But when someone's having a spritz, even if there's no bottle of Aperol on the table, you can recognize it. And so a lot of it was like, how do you create this drink that I knew had to be Mediterranean because I was so inspired by all the recipes of my grandmother. I have her cookbook and anytime I look for inspiration, that's where I can, you know, I delve into. And I started looking into that, but you know, there's something about that.
• 16:16
  the 70s Italian disco, you know, postmodernism that was also very white and very exclusive in a way. It's not adapted. And, you know, we're talking research from two years ago. So, you know, not quite as recent as the events from the summer. But even then, it was very important to me that the brand felt like it was for everyone and didn't feel like this luxurious, you know, slim errands cliche. It was, it had to be adapted somehow. So how do you make something that's like,
• 16:44
  a non-alcoholic aperitif that's very niche, very approachable. And so that's where we started, you know, playing with color and all of that. And so there was...
• 16:53
  this big wall in my house that had just become like the gear wall. And it wasn't even the name at the time. It was just like, we didn't have a name. It was like new beverage company, maybe everywhere. And you know, the minutes I started working on this, it's all I wanted to do. So I didn't really want to do the consulting for other clients anymore. I just knew that that had to be the thing. And, and I was just consulting, you know, during the day so I could work on gear at night. I was self funding for many months.
• 17:23
  And started figuring out how to find a formulator. We had to make the product first and we had to make a great product. And I didn't have that expertise. So figuring out where my blind spots were and how I could bring on the help to help me bring the product to life.
• 17:40
  And how did you find a formulator? Like, what did you do? What do you have to look for if it's, you know, a beverage? Of course. And especially this specific of a beverage that doesn't really exist yet. I asked all my friends who work in food if they knew anyone. I got a few referrals and I met with five or six people and,
• 18:01
  that had a plethora of experience across categories. A lot of food chemists and formulators, they will do beverages across categories, so they will do alcohol. And so I spoke to some people who work with fermentation, and I spoke to some people who work in non-alcoholic, and I spoke to some people that do food and drinks in general. And then I met this one guy,
• 18:27
  who said, I believe non-alcoholic aperitifs are the future of beverages. And like, you know, his favorite drinks are bitter. And all of these things, it felt very charismatic. And I just knew I had to work with him. Wow. And so when you're finding a manufacturer that is able to bring your idea to life, how many bottles do you need to order? What's the minimum order? You know, it's in the thousands for sure. It was definitely a big order. What felt like a big order.
• 18:57
  I think our first batch, we ended up making 500 bottles of the product, but that was for product development. So it was with the idea of making more in the future. They were not even our final bottles yet. They were just friends and family samples because we really wanted to get a lot of feedback. And...
• 19:14
  We were so grateful to have been able to do that before the pandemic. So we finalized our formula. It took us a year to finalize the formula. Wow, that's crazy. 37 iterations. We got a lot of feedback. It's very difficult to create a beverage that will have many notes, that will be very complex, but that will be made entirely of extracts. And we're also trying to figure out how we make a drink that people can actually afford and it's not...
• 19:43
  you know, really crazy expensive. So a bottle of Gia retails for $33, but it's only extracts and it's only clean ingredients in there. There are no flavors and that's very difficult to do. So it was also, how do you create something that is...
• 19:59
  concentrated but that you know provides value for the customer so we ended up concentrating it more so that people could spritz it so that it would be a better value per serving for them while remaining really really clean but then you have all these really potent extracts and they interact with each other and you don't have booze to preserve it so how do you create a formula that's chemically stable and that was a big challenge for us
• 20:22
  Yeah. Wow. It sounds such a big challenge. I learned so much. It was an incredible year, but it was definitely stressful. You know, we were also working during the day and then, you know, trying to pay for the formulator and our first employee to work for the first year before we brought the product to market. Who was your first employee and how did you identify what you needed and who to hire? Yeah.
• 20:47
  So at first, you know, I think a lot of startups are like you hire people, you know, because you've worked with them before or you kind of grab on to the network that's around you. And so it wasn't even a formal recruiting process, but I ended up hiring a COO very early on a few months in to help me.
• 21:07
  really figure out the operations and the legal part of the business. We knew that there would be a lot of trademark challenges. We want GIA to be global eventually. And so we wanted to protect, you know, our intellectual property. And there was just so much to do. So I ended up hiring Henry, who is a friend that I've known for many, many years, who actually used to run an agency that had worked with us on the Glossier flagship. And he left after...
• 21:35
  eight years on the job. And he said, I thought he was going to help me with my consulting projects because he's also a very talented designer. And he said, I need to go on vacation. I've been in my job for eight years. But when I come back, I'll take some of the retail work off your plate so you can focus on the beverage company. And he happened to go to the South of France. And I said, you know, if you try anything delicious there, like, let me know, bring back a bottle is good research. I'm not able to go to France for,
• 22:02
  a bit. So definitely look into that for me. And he came back and he had all of the of the entire Riviera. And he said, okay, I was kidding before. I definitely just want to work on the beverage company with you. And so I said, okay, come on in.
• 22:18
  Wow. So first employee, that's so exciting. How cool, especially to work with a friend. Yeah. Something that I love to talk about is sort of more in the money side of things. And I know you guys did a friends and family round and something that I'm really eager to learn about is how you actually do a friends and family round. What are the steps? You know, is it an email? Is it text messages? What's the, like, what are the steps to launching a friends and family round?
• 22:43
  Yeah, it was a bit of both. And, you know, we raised around in October 2019, which feels so...
• 22:52
  far away. It's a completely different world from the one that we live in now. But what I did first is I started, as I was doing my research, I started, you know, tapping some people and entrepreneurs that I admire in my network to kind of get their advice. What did they think of it? How do you even vet an idea other than the gut feeling? And I'm a very intuitive person. So I'm like, this one feels right, you know, but it's like, how do you know when it's the one? Like, does it make any business sense? Is there anything to look out for?
• 23:20
  And so I reached out to a few people, one of them being Jennifer Rubio, the founder of OA, and a few other founders that either I had worked for before. And I just really asked them for advice. I told them the idea. We didn't have a name. We didn't have a deck. We didn't have anything. It was, you know, so I reached out to Emily Weiss and I reached out to Jen Rubio and I reached out to a few others. And they all...
• 23:46
  I could tell I was so excited by it. And I think they had all worked with me before or seen my work before. And they said, do it. I'll invest. And I think that was the vote of confidence that I needed. It was those first checks from these really admirable entrepreneurs that have done so well.
• 24:04
  And that were also, you know, good anchors for me to be able to go out to people that I didn't know as well and say, we already have, you know, commitments from these people that whose judgment you probably trust, you know, more than mine. So then we put it back together, really talking about.
• 24:20
  The opportunity, you know, and there's not a ton of research on non-alcoholic drinks because you have alcohol and then you have sodas. And so we were trying to create a new category, which is very different. But the reality is, I think a lot of people resonated with this idea of like trying to cut down on drinking, but not having options. So sometimes the big idea really, you know, you get to convince people with the very practical details. And it was like asking questions such as,
• 24:47
  When does it make sense to socialize but not be drunk? So many occasions. And so we put a deck together and we reached out to people individually, people that I had worked with in the past, and then just friends that I knew were investing in,
• 25:02
  And you really have to put yourself out there. Thankfully, we weren't raising a lot of money. And so we ended up just scheduling a number of meetings and some of the people that, um, had decided to invest also referred us to some of their friends. So it was very kind of friends and family and then friends of friends. And we ended up raising around in a week. So I did something like 50 or 60 meetings and the week just back to back, to back, to back. And then by, so the following Monday, we were, we had, you know, all of the money that we needed and more, which.
• 25:32
  was very lucky given I think it's much harder to raise money today, but it went quickly. Wow. That is so crazy to achieve in a week. Did you have to, once you had all the commitments from the different people, what happens next? Like, do you have to hire a lawyer to be like, okay, we're going to draw up a million contracts. Do you just shoot out your bank details and be like, Hey, here we go. What's the actual step there?
• 26:00
  Pretty much, actually. So we decided to open a safe note. It was easy and it was the least expensive one in terms of legal fees. And we hired a lawyer. And we ended up... People are like, okay, I'm in for $25,000 or $50,000. And you end up sending them your wire information and a safe note that they'll sign and that you'll sign and counter-execute when you get the money, basically. So it's pretty simple.
• 26:29
  Wow. Must have been so thrilling. I love that. So cool. Congrats, by the way. Related congrats. And so once you have all the money in your account, what happens next? What kind of things did you spend the early money on?
• 26:43
  Formulation, for sure. That was really the most important one for us. And then we started looking for a design agency. It was clear to me that I had the vision for the brand, but I needed help really bringing it to life. And, you know, I'm not a designer by any means. And so we started looking for a design agency and we knew that that would be, you know, a part of the budget.
• 27:06
  We started looking for a web developer and we started sourcing our packaging and materials, which was incredibly difficult and was made even more difficult during the pandemic. What happened?
• 27:18
  Well, our factory shut down to make hand sanitizer, among other things. Oh my gosh, of course. You know, some of the packaging that was supposed to be made in China, we had to move to the US, but then the US shut down. And, you know, our bottles got stuck in Italy. And it was just so many things that you can't, if it was in a movie, you would say that it's...
• 27:40
  you know, not credible. Every challenge that came your way, you were just like, oh my God, not another. Yeah, it'd be like, oh, it's too much. There's no way.
• 27:50
  the universe testing you. I really want to talk about your branding for a hot second because something that really drawed me into your brand in the first place was the visuals, the tone of voice, the language. All of it is just so unbelievably cool and different and unique. I know you've obviously brought this to life through, you know, your experience in the Mediterranean, but how did it come together? What was the process of, you know, bringing it to life with this agency?
• 28:19
  Yeah, so we worked really closely with them. The agency is Willow Perrone & Associates. I always love to give them a really big shout out because they really feel like family to us now. They can pull ideas out of our brains and make them better. And, you know, they were an agency that had not really worked on a lot of CPG products before. They really worked in music and they did environmental and design. And so...
• 28:42
  you know, when we, it was a fun rabbit hole to get into, to start really looking into aperitif brands through their eyes. And, you know, a lot of it started with them asking me to talk about the inspiration for the brand. So I showed them my grandmother's cookbook and I talked about her a lot. And, you know, I was like, what do you love in terms of design and colors? And I have this weird obsession with totem poles. And so a lot of it was like, you know, a Tori Satsas in postmodern design, the, you know, like...
• 29:12
  some of Hugo Vondinan's, you know, totem poles and all of these really playful, colorful, joyful colors and talking a little bit about the things that we loved about all of our inspiration images and things that we didn't love. And as we discussed, you know, a lot of it was felt a little bit exclusive. It felt like, you know, top 1% of like Italy, you know, vacation. And I was like, how do you bring this to every day in a way that's very approachable?
• 29:41
  And then some of it was also very practical. Like, you know, everybody had told me if you want your product to sell on a shelf, you're going to have to explain what it is. It needs to say, you know, non-alcoholic aperitif, bitter and big. And we started looking at the label and it was like, not really happening. I was not convinced that that would work for us. And so we decided to do the exact opposite and have a very minimal label. Yeah.
• 30:07
  with a really fun top so that it's more of an object that you gravitate toward and want to grab the read closer. And maybe that won't serve as well. I guess, you know, we're open to changing it. But so far, I think it's really resonated with people as like a really fun object that they want to read. So they helped us find our name, first of all, and we wanted a name that could be easy to pronounce in a lot of languages and was really happy. And it was one of those things where when they said it, we just knew it was the name and we've been looking for a name forever.
• 30:35
  And we also talked a lot about the personality of the brand. And for us, it was the personality. A lot of it was about gathering. So a lot of the moments that we were describing were kind of social, which is...
• 30:48
  something we've really had to pivot from with the pandemic because we launched in a time when people can't really gather in person as much. But it was like, you know, Guilla for us was the coolest girl at the party, but she welcomes you with open arms. Like she's, you know, that friend who is the warmest of sun and just always makes you feel like the most welcome. So this idea of invitation and participation, again, was omnipresent in the brand.
• 31:12
  I love that. Wow. And I hope that everyone who listens to this episode jumps straight on your website and your Instagram to check it out because it is just so cool. So amazing. I really want to get into the launch of the brand and what happens in the lead up to launching a brand like this and your go-to market strategy, how you got your first customers and what, you know, the response was like launching something that was in a new category. Yeah.
• 31:40
  Yes, it was, you know, our launch was very difficult. If we say the truth, it was, first of all, it was during the pandemic. Our initial plans for launch was to launch exclusively in restaurants on April 1st with a product that chef and our friends would, you know, get customers to discover so that we could really finalize the formula based on people's feedback and then gear up for a launch in retail and a bigger launch. Yeah.
• 32:10
  And of course, two weeks before that, all the restaurants in the world shut down. So we're here with all of these samples and really no one to sell them to. And...
• 32:20
  Also, I think just a moment of panic. Nobody knew what was going to happen. Remember the time when people said, wow, lockdown, it might last until May. And we thought that was so crazy. So we had no sense of timeline. But it became very clear we needed to pivot to a digital first approach a few weeks in. So yeah.
• 32:42
  We did that and we figured out how to work remote like many other teams. And that's when all the supply chain issues really started happening. It was like delays, delays, delays. We couldn't do a photo shoot. We couldn't do so many things. And finally, we said, okay, we managed to produce our drink. And so we said, okay, we're going to be launching. It was really important for us to launch before summer because it's a very bitter drink. It's kind of perfect for that.
• 33:12
  At that point, when we set the revised date, we thought we would be fully reopened by summer.
• 33:18
  So based on, you know, countries like China that were starting to reopen. And so we set the date for June 9th. And then as we got closer to June 9th, it's actually when all of the Black Lives Matter protests started happening in the United States. And so at that point, we hit pause at the beginning of June. And we said, you know, we just have to sit it out and make room for the conversation that's happening and figure out, you know,
• 33:43
  a new date, but we had the product that was ready. So we knew we had to sell it sooner rather than later. So we ended up pushing our launch to June 16th. And the launch was, you know, with a lot of the press, you know, had pulled up because of,
• 33:57
  more significant news happening. And our launch was really like, we sent a newsletter to our small but mighty email list and we posted on Instagram. And we had a few pieces that came out that helped a lot, but that was kind of it, you know? And thankfully people were supportive and people were really excited. And I think people had drunk so much in quarantine and had maybe realized that, you know, we only have one body and we need to take better care of it.
• 34:27
  I think, you know, I was expecting for all my friends to order on launch day and to recognize all of the names and the orders list. And it was like, wow, like orders were going to Massachusetts and orders were going to Iowa. And I think on the first day we sold to 32 states and I just couldn't believe it, you know? Um, so that was, that was really amazing. And through that, you know, we had a lot of word of mouth. I think people were not posting too much on Instagram then because we were still, you know, it was still a bit of a quiet period and.
• 34:57
  And that was very understandable. And so we didn't really know what to expect in terms of spreading the word.
• 35:04
  And we didn't really want to reach out to people either for that. We were also doing a lot of introspection. We were protesting at the same time and we were figuring out what it meant to create a company during those times and really setting the foundations for the culture of our company. And so it was some super rapid movements on the outside, but also true turmoil on the inside. It's like what kind of company you're launching and what it means to launch at this time. And then from there, we ended up...
• 35:33
  we ended up seeing a lot of word of mouth from people. And we realized, you know, a very high number of people repeated really early on. So people that truly either didn't drink at all or just, you know, really lost the product. And, um, we got something like, I forget the number, but in the first 10 days we had like a,
• 35:52
  10 or 15% repeat rate, which is like, that means like you drank the whole bottle in like the first week and you needed another one immediately. Right. And then we also saw that about 10% of our orders were gifts to others. It's like people wanting to connect at all costs. And if it meant through, you know, a little package that would get on their doorstep, then, you know, so be it. So it was great to see that and to see people sharing Gia, even when they couldn't actually, you know, sprits together.
• 36:19
  Yeah, gosh, that sounds so amazing. And I think I read you wrote something like more than 10,000 handwritten letters or something crazy like that. Not 10,000, but yeah, 1,200 in our first week, which was a lot of notes.
• 36:34
  Oh my gosh, your hand must have been so sore. And I love all of the press that you've been receiving because it just, you know, it really tells your story and it really makes you want to order the drink. Like I totally get the significance of press in your case. What's the plan for global expansion? When can the rest of us have your brand?
• 36:56
  We get asked this so much and I feel bad because even at launch, my parents still had not tried Guia. But, you know, right now we are not working on international expansions yet, but it is, you know, in our plans and it will be prioritized soon. The goal will be to have Guia.
• 37:14
  you know, everywhere when it makes sense. But we don't want to just turn on shipping and then, you know, have people in Europe there at the cost of a really, really expensive bottle of guia. We want to be really intentional with how we go to market in each country, how we speak to a local audience. And we want to be as thoughtful as we were when we thought about our launch in the United States. So we want it to be an experience. And hopefully it will be more IRL than our launch over here in the U.S.
• 37:41
  Oh, bringing that retail experience, hospitality experience to life. I love that. How exciting. What advice do you have for women who have a big idea and want to launch their own thing? That's a good question. I would say, you know,
• 38:02
  Really testing product market fits is so important. There are so many great ideas that just don't succeed because it's not the right time for the audience. And so I think for us, it was doing a lot of community building before and seeing how people reacted to their drink. We learned so much before we actually finalized the formula and did our first big batch of products.
• 38:25
  thousands of bottles. And so I would say like involve your community in the creation of your product because they're, if they're the ones that will give you the feedback, you don't hear it as much from customers when it's bad and you, um, you want to create it for them. So create a product that they will be addicted to.
• 38:46
  I love that. Thank you. We are up to the six quick questions that I ask to every woman that I speak to. Question number one is, what's your why? I want to help people gather more mindfully. I want to create experiences that will be, you know, memorable. And I think GIA really helps us.
• 39:10
  really helps with the simple things, which are the, you know, I think someone told me once, like how you live your days is how you live your life. And for me, it's all about these really small moments and making them count. And if it means gathering better and having drinks together in a more connected way, then that's like a great life purpose for me. Absolutely. And I think now more than ever, it's super important to be doing that and
• 39:36
  sharing those small moments with the people that you care about and the people closest to you. Question number two is what's the number one marketing moment that's made the business pop so far?
• 39:48
  We were included in New York Times in August, thanks to Julia Bainbridge, who is an incredible writer, whose books about non-alcoholic drinks is actually coming out in October. And she included us in a very thoughtful piece about bitter aperitifs. And that was really a big moment for us.
• 40:08
  I definitely read that article and I loved it. I actually came across the article, though, funnily enough, through the LeanLux newsletter. It was included as a link and I was like, oh, this is so cool. I've had this brand on my radar. So I love LeanLux. Shout out to them. Yeah, shout out to Paul. They're incredible and they've been so supportive of us since our launch. So for sure.
• 40:29
  Really cool. Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? Where are you learning these days? Well, these days it's a lot of learning on the internet, I have to say. But, you know, I've actually been really, you know, thinking a lot, obviously, about current events. And I've been able to find like a network of friends with whom we can have some of these debates and conversations in a really safe place. And
• 40:55
  It's been really inspiring actually to be able to talk about all of this throughout the summer. So people. People, absolutely. Question number four is how do you win the day? And that's around your AM and your PM rituals that keep you feeling motivated and happy and successful and productive. For sure. You know, I think...
• 41:17
  Now that I moved to California last year, I have a much healthier lifestyle. And, you know, we go to bed much earlier and we wake up much earlier. And so I try to work out four times a week, which is not something I could ever achieve in New York. But I play tennis and do things here that...
• 41:33
  a really part of the life that people live. And that's been really helping me, you know, move my body has been helping me clear my head. And I also have learned to organize my day around the times that I'm the most productive. So, you know, from 7 to 10 a.m. is when I'm most productive. So I try to be always at a computer with no meetings during those times and really plan out my day, organize my time for the team and then go into meetings and management after that. And it's just been working so well.
• 42:03
  Yeah, I think it's really important to tap into your personal energy cycles. And it's something we've discussed on the podcast before is traditionally, if you're working in a nine to five, you have to operate, you know, as the company operates. But now with the move away from the nine to five and the office sort of set up, people are having the freedom to work at their own pace and thrive in a really special way, which I really love. And it's definitely something that I love.
• 42:28
  value most about being able to work for myself. For sure. Question number five is, if you only had a thousand dollars left in your business bank account, where would you spend it?
• 42:43
  That's very little money, but I would probably spend it on the existing customers that I have. I think I would either spend it on like a survey or learning about how we can make GIA better for them or try to get them to come back.
• 42:59
  for the product. I think your core, your first cohort of core customers from the very beginning, like are your biggest advocates. And so if it came down to having very little money on our bank account, I would invest in them to help us grow organically. Love that. And question number six, final question is how do you deal with failure? And that's around your personal mindset or an experience that you have in mind.
• 43:26
  It's very hard. I think, you know, we think about this all the time. And I think as an entrepreneur, there's a lot of fear of failure as well. And that's just as crippling, I think, as grieving, like grieving a success that didn't happen. And so I think really going back to your why or why you're doing this and, you know,
• 43:48
  launching during the pandemic felt like a failure in March when we realized we couldn't launch. And it was really asking ourselves the questions of like, why we're doing this? Is it still worth it to keep pushing? Is it still what we want to do? Do we feel like this is a product that people still need? And I think that's really helped recenter ourselves. And I mean that for the whole company, because it was also really hard to kind of be the driver of
• 44:13
  energy in the company when I didn't have the answer that felt like already a failure in terms of management so early on. And so it was going back to the why and trying to be centered and getting some advice from the people that I trusted had been through this before.
• 44:29
  Incredible. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I have loved to learn about your business and everything that you're doing is just so incredible. So thank you really. Thank you so much, Dune. Thank you for the opportunity. And I hope we can meet in person very soon. Oh, me too. With a gear. Yes, for sure.
• 44:52
  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.
• 45:16
  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.
• 45:39
  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.
• 45:56
  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.
• 46:20
  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.
• 46:43
  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.