FFW x Flause - Sam - Nov 29
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Hey, business besties. Welcome back to the Female Founder World podcast. I'm Jasmine. I'm the host of the show and the creator of Female Founder World. Today I'm chatting with Samantha Cox, the founder of Flouse. Welcome to the show. Yay. Thank you so much for having me. I am such a huge fan and I'm just excited to be here.
Marker
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You are now entering female founder world with your host, Jasmine
Garnsworthy.
And you came and spoke at our event, People Around the World. You were one of the mentors in the money train. And we're going to try and like drill down into all of your lessons around fundraising, crowdfunding that you shared on the money train. But Thank you for coming to the event. Yeah, thank you for having me.
It was awesome to get to actually participate this time versus just being an attendee. I hope you enjoyed it. Oh, I loved it. It was honestly, highlight, best event. If anyone's on the fence next year about going, definitely recommend. Thank you so much for saying that. Yeah, guys, get your tickets to Summit.
We sold out this year. We're going to sell out next year again. Um, so I get like these DMs like two days before the event with people saying, I can see you sold out. Can I still get tickets? And it [00:01:00] like, We have a, we have a, like, a legal capacity that we can have in the actual event venue. Otherwise, guys, I would just keep those ticket sales open and I would let everyone in.
So, yeah, next year get your tickets early because they do sell out. They sell out and honestly, I also think it's nice, like, having some sort of capacity so you can really feel like you're getting to know people, you're networking, it's not too crowded and crazy. It felt like very, you know, Intimate and personal and I felt like that made it even more impactful Thank you for saying that it's definitely something that i've been thinking about as these events get bigger like summit was like 700 people and I think about like where we started with these really small kind of like informal organic community events that feel so special and tight and how do you replicate that in these really big spaces.
So I like, I really appreciate that you felt that because it's been very intentional trying to do that. Yeah, it was amazing. And it was fun like how you guys featured different brands too as like vendors and it was awesome. I mean, I, we were just talking about offline. I mean, it was, I felt like it was probably [00:02:00] one of the best.
networking, learning events I've been to this year, by far. Thank you so much. Okay, for people that don't know Floss, let's, this conversation is about you, not about me. So let's talk about your business. What are you building? So, Floss is the world's first electric flosser, similar to your electric toothbrush, but for flossing.
So, it was inspired after a painful and expensive trip to the dentist. I, Admittedly, was a great twice a day toothbrusher, a horrible flosser. Yep, aren't we all? So after coming back after lying to my dental hygienist about my flossing, I thought, I hate flossing, but I know how critically important it is to my smile and my health.
But I love using my electric toothbrush. I'm just going to go buy an electric flosser. And this was back in 2019, and I went online to go buy one and discovered So I set out to create the world's first electric flosser and, um, really the vision for the brand is to create the oral beauty space and help educate consumers that oral health is overall health and, you know, oral [00:03:00] care is the first step in self care.
And so, really getting people to feel empowered and enjoy, you their oral care routine as much as they do their skin, nail, and hair routine. I'm so curious about this, like, inflection point of founders who, like, you're a lawyer. Yeah, lawyer. And then you're launching this consumer product and, like, hardware, like, this is really hard to do and really difficult and just, like, you wouldn't think it was the same skill set or even, like, maybe the same kind of person who wants to be a corporate lawyer who would, like, go down this path.
Did you always secretly wanted to be, want to be an entrepreneur? So, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur ever since I was young, young, I had been consistently coming up with ideas, but I never had an idea that actually like stuck, you know, so growing up, my family was very much of the mentality of like doctor or lawyer.
So I went to USC for undergrad and I was first pre med. hated that. Then I was like, okay, now I'm pre law. And my sister ended up having two options. Yes, I have two options. Here we go. And I liked the legal [00:04:00] one better. And so then I finished USC. I went straight to NYU law. My sister ended up becoming a doctor.
I became the lawyer. And I just remember working so hard to graduate law school, to take the bar, to work at this law firm. prestigious law firm and just being like, I am a creative. Like, what am I doing here? And I always just had these ideas nipping at me. But Flouse was really the first one where it just made so, it was it.
Like, it just like hit me like a train of like, this is it. is meant to exist in the world. And I feel like this is one of my life purposes is to bring this to fruition. That is what it felt like. Amazing. So when you had the idea, it was 2019, but you guys didn't launch for a little while after that. When did you launch?
So we officially, we were in beta since 2021 and we officially launched into market September 2023. It's a long journey. It is a very long journey. That is the thing with consumer electronic hardware. Unlike, um, tech is, or even food and bev, it's The iteration [00:05:00] cycle is really, really long and it's very capital intensive.
So just to get from prototyping to your first manufacturing run, it's a million dollar investment. And it takes over a year. And so it is such a long, long, long process. It's very expensive, but those are also the moats of the opportunity, right? It's not something that you can just quickly spin up and go.
Um. Yeah. But that's why I stayed as a lawyer for as long as I could while I was doing Flouse on the side. So it was about a year and a half of overlap because I wanted to be able to save enough money so that when I could leave to go full time for Flouse, I didn't have to take money out of the company.
I just depleted my savings, which was stressful in and of itself, but I almost feel like it's a rite of passage to being a lawyer, uh, being a founder. Yeah. What was that inflection point when you decided to quit your job? Yeah. So, um, actually like. Take me to that day. That day of deciding, okay, so it was the most seemingly, like, innocuous moment, um, it was Galentine's, so it was February, and it was Galentine's, and [00:06:00] I remember we were creating flower bouquets for other, like, female lawyers in the office, and I was doing this diligence memo on this massive entertainment deal I was on, and I stopped to make this flower bouquet, and then I went back to the diligence memo.
And it was in that switching of tasks that I was like, I just got more intrinsic value out of making a flower bouquet that I've had at one second at this job. And that's when I was like, I am a creative. I'm obviously extremely analytical, but like I this, Can't be it for me. And I had already had Flouse kind of brewing in the background.
So at that point, I was like, you want, it felt like a breakup. It was so scary. I had worked so hard. It was all this risk. And then I got a coach and I just felt like I needed someone who could help me get out of the fear based mindset and recognize like this is an opportunity and I'm never going to regret an investment in myself.
And if we're going to take a risk. Let's do it now. Versus like, when I have kids, or not [00:07:00] saying you can't take those risks when you have kids, but like, you know, there's more things tying you down. Whereas now I'm like, it's just me, and it, God forbid it doesn't work out. I can always go back to being a lawyer.
Yeah. Yeah. It's gonna work out. I think it's worked out already, actually. It's working out pretty well. I want to talk a little bit more about those early days, and like, actually, Getting this thing out into the world. You have this like beautiful product that works really well. Your branding is great Like what was step one?
Like, how did you get here? Okay, so it was a very it was a winding journey But hopefully something that hopefully your listeners can can take lessons from so I first came up with the idea and I started to just talk to my family and friends about it and I think every budding entrepreneur is like I'm a Oh, it's a secret.
I don't want anyone knowing like they might steal my idea. Um, Good luck. You try and steal the idea. It's really hard. Yeah. Good luck. No one's going to care or work as hard as you for this idea. And it's, it's way better to get the idea out there and get feedback to have this like [00:08:00] secret. Um, anyways, but I started talking to my friends and family and that's when I realized at the time I thought I was the only one not flossing because it's shameful to admit you're not flossing.
That's when I came to learn hardly anyone was flossing, and we all aren't flossing for the same reasons. It takes too long, it's painful, it's gross, it's difficult, and it's wasteful. So, as soon as I recognized that the pain points were pretty much universal, and that this idea, similar to why a person would go from a manual toothbrush to an electric toothbrush, the same logic applied, I was like, okay, this makes a lot of sense.
But I didn't want to put in a single dollar until I actually validated the idea. So after doing hundreds of hours of diligence, just on the market size, the opportunity, why hasn't this existed before? I decided to launch a Survey Monkey. So it went out to 1600 participants or 600 participants, excuse me, across the U.
S. And I just asked a 15 question survey, like, how often are you currently flossing? What do you use to floss? How often are you brushing your [00:09:00] teeth? And what are the main pain points that you currently experience? And then also gave a two, two sentence overview of Floss. Like no images, nothing. And it was just basically like, would you buy this product or not?
And I just thought at the time, my co founder and I, um, we just thought, you know, let's just see what this comes back as. Like if it comes back that people aren't interested in it, then okay, we're not going to keep spending more time. If it comes back really positive. We're gonna get an engineer, we're gonna start actually like designing this product, um, and it came, it started coming back the results within two hours and it was overwhelmingly positive.
Wow. And it was so validating and I learned so much from those results. One of the things I learned from SurveyMonkey, and I highly recommend using them as a great resource, is you can splice the data. So I thought I was starting Floss as a non flosser, helping other non flossers start flossing, But in the data, I learned that the most avid person [00:10:00] who's the most excited about an idea like Floss was actually the daily flosser.
It was a person that's already doing it. They're already bought into the benefits of flossing, but they want a quicker, easier, better way to do it. And that just, yeah. It turned everything on its head for me because then I was like, wait, amazing. I now don't need to invest in education of why they should even be flossing in general.
I can go after the segment that's already doing it and I can leave the education investment to the Oral B's and the Colgate's of the world. And um, that data has been nothing but validated throughout, you know, five years later. Wow. Yeah. How do you get 600 people to answer a survey? So Survey Monkey has their own audience.
Yeah. And they just like paid. You just pay. It was, um, so I have 600 people. I paid 1, 200 at the time. Again, this was 2019, so it was a while ago, but you and everyone needs the floss, but you could even segment down their demographics to women. You could parents to someone that works in nursing, and it gives you such an incredible access to [00:11:00] these people who will just fill out these surveys.
And I would be on the one hand like, Oh, maybe it's a little biased, but Honestly, our results have been nothing but confirmed year after year based on these original findings. Wow. You mentioned right at the beginning how expensive it is to create something like this. Where did the money come from to start the process of designing this project?
Yeah. Um, so my co founder and I invested about 120, 000 to 140, 000 of our own savings. And yeah, you know what? It was really hard because at the time I was working a very prestigious law firm job. He was at Goldman Sachs. Mm hmm. And people were starting to put down down payments on like homes, you know, and so we are making this very intentional decision to instead of invest in a home and a fixed asset like that, we're instead investing in something that's like hyper, hyper risky, but then the upside is so much greater.
Okay [00:12:00] business besties, I want to just pause for a second. I've got Natalie here on the Female Founderboard team and I want to ask, Nat, are you ready for the holidays? Honestly, no, and I feel like it's coming up so quickly. It's coming up so quickly and that's why I wanted to take a second to chat about this season's presenting sponsor, Vistaprint.
It's honestly the best place to start holiday shopping and right now Vistaprint is giving all Female Founderboard listeners an early holiday gift. Up to 50 percent off holiday cards, wall calendars and more. Oh wow, 50 percent is a pretty, pretty good deal. How do you even have time though for all this holiday shopping?
I know, honestly, like I, I'm usually pretty disorganized but I've been quite on it this year and we've also been sending out these really cute thank you packs to fans. different founders who have been on the podcast, speakers who have been at the events, we've printed really cute like little fleece blankets, we have embroidered caps and also stuff for my family as well because you [00:13:00] know everyone's going to be wearing the Female Founder World merch.
Oh of course, you got to bring the family into it and I I personally love a branded tote bag, but I also didn't know that they did embroidery. That's pretty cool. The embroidered caps are particularly cute. Oh, I love that. Highly recommend. So everyone, go and get your holiday shopping buttoned up with up to 50 percent off custom holiday cards, wall calendars, and more at vistaprint.
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And so, yeah, we invest about 120, it might have been 140 when it was all said and done, thousand dollars of our own savings. And that was. Tough, but it was also like made you even more bought in and investors, our family and friends wanted to see is that that was the common question we'd get in the beginning is how much money did you put in because they're like, if you're not willing to put in money, I'm not going to put in money.
And luckily, you know, I It's not like I have, I come from a lot of family money, but my law firm job was very well paid and so I just, you know, saved [00:14:00] and I was like, you know, I'm, instead of putting this money down towards paying off my student loans or buying a house, like, I'm just gonna put it towards this dream I have.
Wow, I love this story so much. You, Then went and created an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign and that was super successful and we're fast forwarding a bit. It's 2021 now. It's 2021 now. How did you learn about that and how much money did you raise? Yes. Okay. So in order, as we were saying that consumer electronic hardware is quite capital intensive.
So after investing our personal funds, we then went to our closest family and friends And, um, our first money in was a 25, 000 loan from, um, my, uh, At the time, co founder's dad's best friend. Um, and then I went to my law firm colleagues and they had all seen me just crushing it at the law firm despite me being totally miserable.
And it was wild. All of them were like, I don't even care what you're working on. I want to give you money because I believe in you. And, um, so I collected some money that way to [00:15:00] really get going to like, hire an engineer and start prototyping like It takes a lot of money and time And then as I continue talking to people as I started moving outside of the friends and family round more towards like People in their network.
I would start to get asked the question Oh, well, are people willing to put down their credit card for the product and I was like Well, we don't even have a manufactured product. So, um, then I thought, okay, what am I going to do? I could either do a crowdfunding campaign like a Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or I could just sell directly on our website and do a pre order.
Because at the time, Kickstarter and Indiegogo have been around for about, you know, now it's like 15 years about the time, like 10 years, and it was hyper saturated. And what a lot of people don't realize is that if your campaign fails It's public, it's live on there forever, so like, Quip is a great company that's obviously done great, but they had a failed Indiegogo campaign, and it's just on there.
And so that was really scary, so we were even debating, like, do we launch under a different brand name, [00:16:00] like, you know, risk and all this stuff, and basically, a couple of factors Pointed us towards doing a crowdfunding campaign, specifically Indiegogo. One, these consumers understand that they are getting the first version of a product.
They are typically people who back crowdfunding campaigns are serial backers. They backed them numerous times. They gets the first version of a product, so it's not going to be perfect. Online consumers expect the product to be perfect. Also these consumers. Also understand that they're going to be waiting a while because you take the funds from the crowdfunding campaign and then you go and you do manufacturing and production.
So from when our campaign ended to when we delivered was about nine months. That was another factor that was like most people online because you know Amazon Prime is like I Put in my payment and I get it in three days. So those were the things that started pushing us towards doing an Indiegogo campaign.
And then what I did next was I went on both Kickstarter and Indiegogo and I looked at either basically companies and [00:17:00] products that are in parallel verticals to us. So electric toothbrushes, electric razors. And I was looking to see, one, have they had successful campaigns, because if they had not had a successful campaign, I don't think I was going to be the first one.
I then found that there was many successful campaigns. Then I started to look at patterns in their different successful campaigns, and I realized almost all of them had been working with something called a crowdfunding agency. So it's an agency that specializes in crowdfunding campaigns, because it's a very unique organization.
marketing funnel, and it's a very niche customer. For example, let's say you get an ad for Flouse and you're like, Ooh, cute, click it. And it takes you to Indiegogo. I know being personally, I would drop off. I'd be like, I'm not, what, what is Indiegogo? And so it was really important that we found the right partners to help us.
And again, my co founder and I, at the time, meet, finance and lawyer. No marketing, no product experience. Um, and then from there, once [00:18:00] we found the right partner, it was kind of like off to the races and it was an extremely successful campaign. We ended up finishing the top one percent of Indiegogo campaigns ever to be on the platform.
Um, there's so many failed campaigns and a lot of it had to do with FOMO. So we launched a landing page where we would collect, um, email leads and we had about 10, 000 email leads going into the Indiegogo campaign. How did you get people to sign up to that? So it was just running ads. So this, um, we just ran like ads to a landing page.
What did the ads say? You didn't have a product yet. Um, yeah, so it was like 3D renders. Everything was 3D renders and we had black box prototypes. So you would take photos of it and like cut off like. The wire to the battery pack and like put it in someone's hand. I mean you scrap these things together. I mean, yeah, it doesn't exist And so we did a lot of 3d renders We did some photos and heavy photoshopping and we just ran some ads just saying like literally the tagline was Like, hate flossing, so did we.
Meet Floss, the world's first electric flosser. And [00:19:00] that was enough. Like, only 30 percent of Americans floss daily. That means 70 percent of Americans are, like, deeply unsatisfied with flossing. And so we knew that that would get people's attention. Um, and it was Super efficient. And then before even launching the campaign with those 10, 000 email subscribers, we then sent them a survey, and we had 2, 500 responses to the survey, understanding, again, how often are they currently flossing?
Because we, you, you know, The consumer and why they're buying flowers is totally different whether they're a daily flosser or a never flosser. So we want to understand that and we want to understand what the, like the preferences of the values and the benefits were. This and this campaign, this Indiegogo, um, marketing agency was just so brilliant in the way that they went through things.
It was very methodical and everything was based on data. Everything like there were no decisions being made that were just like, [00:20:00] Oh, well, this is cookie cutter from one company. We're going to apply it to another. No, it was very specific to our brand and all based on data. Amazing, which was just incredible.
And I'm launching that Indiegogo campaign is what forced me to leave the law firm because I was like, this can't go live while I'm Start scanning. It would have been not good. I want to talk a little bit more about, uh, this agency that you worked with. First of all, whether you can recommend them or if you don't remember the name, if we can pop it in the show notes.
And second, like how much does something like that cost? I've heard, I've heard mixed responses and feelings about working with some of these agencies to fund, to crowdfund. Because they are really expensive. And if you pick one that doesn't do a great job, it can really eat into the funding that you're getting through the platform.
A hundred percent. That's a great question. So at the time, so the, we talked to all the, the top five at the time. So it was like, I think launch boom, rain factory. Um, I don't remember the other ones, but there was a bunch of [00:21:00] agencies of agencies that do this. And again, I found them based on the campaigns that were successful.
in our verticals. So very, very focused and methodical. Rain Factory came out to be the, the top pick for me. Um, I had, I do a lot of backdoor references. I do that with quite honestly every agency I ever work with. And explain what that is. So a backdoor reference is, these agencies will give you references up front of clients, but then you can typically go through and see like what other brands they'll list or other founders and you go and you talk to someone who they did not recommend.
Hopefully, if it's someone that they're not recommending, you get a bit more, um, of a truthful experience, you know, and for most part, it's good, like these, these other people will be like, oh, they're fabulous, but sometimes you will get someone who is like, I would not recommend, and I've even had people do that with me, and I am so honest, because I've been burned so many times by agencies, catfished, that I'm very, very honest.
But anyways, [00:22:00] and so, I decided to work with Brain Factory. At the time, they were about 40, 000 to launch the, um, the, It's a lot of money. It was a lot of money. Well, again, This is, so we invested 120, 000, so I think about 80, 000 of it went towards the engineering prototyping, you know, maybe 60, 000, then 40, 000 went for this agency, and then we did about 20, 000 in, like, to get the marketing spend going, um, and then we, like, took money from, I think it was Clearco at the time, like, luckily my co founder at the time was in finance, so he was able to kind of, like, model this all out, so it was 40, 000, and it was a big investment, but.
My thought, I just felt so confident based on what I was seeing, and I knew for me, like, doing crowdfunding wasn't a way for me to really like raise, fundraise. It was more like proof of concept because I knew I had to go out and raise serious money. Like I had to go out and raise millions of dollars because it just takes that much to get this far.
And so that's [00:23:00] more how I was using it versus thinking like, okay, this is giving me my round of fundraising and now I don't need to raise any more money. No, this was like proof of concept. I have market traction and validation. So it's 40, 000 for them to do the landing page, um, do the surveys, create the entire campaign, manage the whole campaign, which is a month long, um, and then run all the ads.
And then they also got 8 percent of which also there were all these like hidden fees. Indiegogo takes a fee. Stripe took a fee. It all ate into it, but our margins were so good and they That's our margins are so strong that I could support that. So we were never in the negative. Like we, we were barely profitable on it, but it was more so seeing it as like the step for our next goal, which was to actually raise money to create a company.
Which perfect segue into the next piece of this. So you You end up raising this successful Indiegogo campaign, and now you also have people that are like waiting for your product, right? [00:24:00] Even though they're expecting it's going to take a while, but that like kind of puts a bit of pressure on things. So what happens next?
How do you, how do you like get it from there to the next step? So, after that, you go straight into manufacturing and production. So, mind you. You've had a manufacturer at this point? So I actually went, and I've done this now, I've had two different engineering partners and both of them, and I highly recommend this for anyone who does not have any sort of product experience, is finding an engineer who can do end to end.
So it's an engineering agency or firm. Yep. that not only can do the design, the prototyping, the engineering, but can also set up the sourcing of the manufacturer and the logistics to get it stateside. These are all so many moving pieces and our first engineering firm did that and now our second one, Doris Dev, based out of New York, love them so much.
They handle all that for us too. So like from design and just ideation all the way to getting to our 3PL in America, huh? They handle it. And that has been a huge, huge blessing to have in a [00:25:00] partner. But basically, I, we had already been talking to an engineer. I literally Googled engineers near me. That's how I found him, which, you know, I also think you get what you pay for.
And I had a lot of learning lessons. From this first engineer. Um, a lot of learning lessons, but it was such a blessing. We learned so much and we knew that this Indiegogo round was a beta product. And we wanted to make sure that when we launched Flowers, hard launch into market, it was a product that we knew was good enough and strong and something we were really proud of.
And so with the Indiegogo customers, we then, um, it took us about nine months to produce. This is all during COVID. So as you can imagine, we're doing prototypes. When people were walking up to random people in Manhattan Beach, where I lived at the time in LA, asking people to put flowers in their mouth.
And they're like, get away from me, crazy lady. So I had to go to all my friends and family to get them to test the product because like it was the middle of COVID. And I remember my co founder and I were driving around LA at the time and we were like, is [00:26:00] this like, like a super spreader event? Like, are we like causing COVID to go everywhere in LA?
And Luckily we didn't do any of that because we were sanitizing everything, but yeah, we went to manufacturing and production and then the units were ready in November, um, of 20, 2022. They became ready and we shipped them out right before, um, Christmas and God, there was a whole host of issues with this product.
It was, it was really tough. So one of the things that had happened was there was too much pressure being applied to it. to the neck and the body coming together. Flouse 1 had a different design where there was a separation in the neck and the handle. Too much pressure was being applied during the assembly process that was causing a, like a, a tiny little crack, a fracture.
You couldn't see in the human eye, but as time went on, it would get bigger and bigger. That literally would, Pop off the head, the neck off of the device. So flouses were being delivered to our Indiegogo [00:27:00] customers decapitated, and it was like about 10 to 15 percent of our inventory was impacted is otherwise in manufacturing terms known as a catastrophic failure.
It was worst. case scenario, but to have those Indiegogo customers who understood this is the first version product, it's a beta product, and who were willing to give us that feedback on what we needed to do to improve was so invaluable because now we're with Flouse 2 and it's such a premium, better product.
We don't run into any of those same issues, but you can't get here without all those struggles. Wow. Yeah. It was a disaster. Who did your branding? It looks so good. Oh, thank you so much. So we actually worked with this amazing design agency out of Australia. They're called Universal Favorite.
There's a few reasons we went with them. Um, first, I think that Australians just are like so trendy and so on top of. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Like on [00:28:00] top of brands, on top of trends, like just, I love it, I love the creativity of, um, Australians, so that was number one, and then number two, we had the benefit of the exchange rate of the U.
S. dollar versus the Australian dollar, so our money went further, so that also made the most sense, um, and yeah, and they were just incredible partners, they had worked with Youthphoria, right before us. Um, and I loved their work. And it just, you know, they were one of the most incredible partners. Them and Doris Stebb have just been amazing partners where they really understood my vision of what I wanted to do with the brand, create the oral beauty space.
And I have such a strong vision and it's amazing when you can find partners who can tap into that space with you that aren't just like robotically doing tasks, but they're actually taking initiative and they're taking ownership. And I've found that I'm both universal favorite and Doris Dev as, uh, those are why they're the best partners I've ever had.
Between that [00:29:00] Indiegogo campaign and your first product and launching, you know, Flats version two, which is what we have today. You, if you think a lot happened actually, you. Uh, you had a co founder breakup. And you raised two million dollars. Yeah, so, you know, I, my pre seed round was family and friends.
That was about two million dollars. And then, I then have gone on since and raised another about two and a half million dollars in my seed round. And that is a mix of angels and institutional investors. Such as Yeti Capital, the capital arm of Yeti Coolers. Didn't even know that they had a capital arm. Mm hmm.
So they're investing in like up and coming consumer products? Yeah, consumer products. Like they invested in Windmill, um, Nori, which is a really cool iron company. She's been on the show. Oh, Courtney! Mm hmm. Love. Love. And, oh my gosh, it's so important to find your, like, female founder bestie to just keep things, like, to level set.
Her and I were just texting this morning. We share resources all the time, like I'm giving her one of my consultants that we're not working with anymore [00:30:00] because we moved on, and now she's going to her, and so she's amazing. Um, anyways, and so, yeah, Yeti Capital is amazing. Amazing, amazing partners. They actually found us at South by Southwest.
But, um, yeah, a lot has happened and the journey goes by so slowly, but so quickly. And I think one of the most pivotal things so far in my journey and something I am hoping to share is, you know, the experience of losing a co founder, not losing, like, it sounds like RIP, you know, no, it just, It doesn't end up working out.
You break up and being a founder, and as you know, it is, it's not for everyone. It's really, really hard. And I think there are some people that just thrive in a corporate environment. And that's totally fine. That's not the environment of being a founder. Oh, and it's also one of those things that people don't talk about because there is this kind of like stigma, shame or something around it, but it happens.
It's in a lot of people's stories. It kind of gets glossed [00:31:00] over a little bit where a co founder drops off. I, it is so shameful. There is such a stigma around it and it's so fascinating because I feel like the more I've talked about it and been open about it, The more I'll have someone be like, Oh yeah, I lost a co founder too.
Or, oh yeah, I lost two co founders. Like, people just don't talk about it because it, for whatever reason, it's seen as like a sign of like failure. Like it, but it's, it's not. Being, again, this journey is so, so long. And it's just so hard to find someone who's willing to just, Risk it all for something. Being a founder requires you to be, put your company ahead of yourself.
And a lot of people are wanting to be founders for themselves. Yeah. That's why they want to just say they're a founder. They want to be able to write things on LinkedIn or Twitter or whatever. They don't want to do the work and take the sacrifice. Like I left a extremely prestigious job, took on all this debt to get there, to pursue this dream, [00:32:00] because this is like, I feel like it is my.
Purpose to do this and I just knew if if I didn't take a big enough swing I would always live with regret and trying to find someone who's willing to, it's been five years I've been on this journey and I probably have another, you know, three, four more years to go, but for hopefully, you know, an exit.
And that's a lot to ask of someone. And I think co founder breakups are totally normal. I wish they weren't stigmatized so much. And I wish I had more confidence at the outset to know I could do this alone. I don't think I had that. I first time founder, I'm going into oral care, being a lawyer. Um, I didn't have the confidence and now in hindsight.
I could have done this. I could have done it on my own. I mean, you are. I am. I am. And we are operating so much more efficiently, with such greater execution and speed. Because just that element, when it's not working with someone, you have a dysfunctional relationship going on, it drags the company, not [00:33:00] only of time and resources, but of my energy.
You know, and I remember one of my founder friends from NYU Law, NYU Law has an incredible founder community. They also invested in FLOWS and so did USC, both of my alma maters invested. But one person told me, I was talking to him about, you know, I was actually firing an employee that wasn't working out and I was like, well, you know, she has all these great skill sets X, Y, Z, because it's not all bad.
And something he told me, he's like, yeah, but Sam, sometimes it's addition by subtraction. Sometimes this person can have good things, but. There's more negative things that have greater weight than all the good things. And by getting rid of someone, it then increases the everyone else and something else.
Another tip someone gave me that's so true. It's so true, they said, A players don't lift up B players, B players bring down A players. Oof. And they're like, you're as strong as your weakest person on your team. Wow. And that's like, but how would we [00:34:00] know as a first time founder? You don't know, but you have to just make mistakes and then pivot.
Right? Like, that's, this whole journey is just making mistakes and trying to be courageous, but it's scary. It's so scary. What advice do you have for someone who is in this dynamic right now, whether it's with the co founder or team member, someone who is in their, in the orbit of their business and they're just like, there is too much friction here, this isn't working.
Like, how do you, how do you remove yourself from that or remove them from your business? Great question. So, as a little background again for everyone listening, I used to be a corporate M& A attorney. So that's my background. Corporate law dealt with a lot of buyouts, disputes, things like that. First things first, you need to have your paperwork.
Like you need to make sure paperwork is on lock. This isn't just verbal conversations and handshakes. It needs to be Signed, sealed, delivered, dotted I's, crossed T's. That's first. What kind of paperwork? So, uh, whether it's a co founder, you want a founder agreement. You want to [00:35:00] have, um, the restricted stock agreement.
Something that goes to putting your company first. Back when, uh, bringing back in the day when they came up with the four year vesting schedule, this is when companies could get to an exit a lot quicker. Now it takes a lot longer to get to an exit, you know, 10 years. And just to, just to clarify there, a four year vesting schedule means that if you have a certain amount of equity in a business, it'll, you won't be able to do anything with that or like claim any of that until a certain period of time, usually four, for four years.
Exactly. So, Yes, the standard is that most agreements will have a four year vesting schedule with a one year cliff. So let's say, let's just make it easy and let's say you're going to get 40 percent of the company. So you have to stay at the company. What the one year cliff means is that none of the shares will start vesting until you are at the company after that first year.
So if you leave before the first year, you get nothing. Assuming you're there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. After this one year cliff, your 40% will vest in four increments. So the first one will be, [00:36:00] you know, the first year will be 10%. The second year will be 20%, 30%, 40%. That's how it's typically done, but because it takes so long to get to an exit.
Um, on our founder stock, we had six year vesting schedules. And I remember my co founder at the time being like, well, that's not in like our best interest. We want it to be four year and have to put the company ahead of yourself. It's like, right, it is four years and that would be better for us. But because it's taking so long, this actually protects the company because you don't want someone, let's say, um, Someone was with you after two years and they walk away with 20 percent of your company and you still have another eight years To go on that journey and that person is 20 percent it then impacts your ability to fundraise Because it's known as quote dead equity on the cap table.
It's capped. It's it's it's Equity that's no longer valuable or providing services and so it's just so important that you're [00:37:00] strategic about the paperwork You get a good startup attorney who can help you navigate your process and then having a coach was so important for me through this period because I felt like my, my sanity was questioned, like things, like, if I was alone, it would have been so hard to navigate it.
And especially again, going back to being a first time founder, I did not understand what that experience was going to be like and to have someone who was coaching me through it to make sure and encourage me to show up as the best leader I could be, oh, it was just. It's. I couldn't have gotten through it without my coach at the time.
I want to talk about your hard launch once you had this beautiful, ready to go product, this version 2. How did you get it out into the world? You know, your background is in law. You're not necessarily a marketer. How did you know what to do and what did you learn? Yeah, so it became clear to us. So [00:38:00] Indiegogo was an amazing company.
Place to just learn about our consumer, who this consumer was, why they were buying Flo, where they typically go. And because it was so, we had so much success building up our landing page wait list, it became clear that we would start off as a direct consumer company. And I was also coming up in the time of like the heyday of direct consumer of like 20 19, 20 20, kind of before everything took a nosedive in 2022.
And so I think I would just kind of assume like I'm gonna be direct consumer. That's what I'm gonna do. It makes the most sense. And so my thought process was, you know, just like I've been so methodical this entire time about building this company and my mission and everything we've done, I want to be really methodical about the go to market plan.
So instead of kind of doing this spray and pray approach of like, I'm going to do Amazon and TikTok shops and wholesale all at the same time, I was like, I'm going to do one thing and do it really, really well. So I decided that was direct to consumer and to launch, we actually stuck with our [00:39:00] crowdfunding They did our initial launch and that was really helpful because when we were still in beta at the time, so we were still selling through Flouse 1 while we were working on Flouse 2.
And we used that period to make sure our marketing funnel was honed in. There weren't any leaky buckets, making sure our messaging and our creative made sense. And then once we got to Flouse 2, it was like, okay, We got a new marketing agency. I, um, tapped into my network of founder friends, which New York has one of the most amazing startup founder communities.
It is just incredible. I tapped into that network and I interviewed about like probably 10 marketing agencies and I ended up going with Lunar Solar Group here based in New York and we just kind of came up with a strategy of like, okay, this is how we're going to attack it and really just taking all the learnings from Indiegogo.
And so. We launched in September, we were named Time's Best Inventions of the Year. Did you have a PR agency? Um, no, at the time we did not. This was all [00:40:00] organic. Wow. Like, just us, you know, putting things in. And, like, newsflash for most people, you have to pay, like, 5, 000 to even be To even be like, um, like considerate, and then you get it.
First of all, I've, we've applied for other things that much, and you don't get it, and you're like, that's 5, 000. Then you get the award, and then they try to get you to license it for the, like, award thing for like 20, 000, 40, 000. And it's like, Is this supposed to be a secret award that no one knows about?
And it just, I mean, that has been very eye opening and a little disillusioning how some of these things work. And a lot of, a lot of these, um, you know, best of kind of. Oh yeah. Yeah. A lot of these things are paid for. We try to do everything organic. Like, it's like either you love the product or you don't.
We have not, aside from applying for awards, but we've never paid for an award. Like, but we've like, with Time's Best Inventions or Fast Company World Changing Ideas, which we also got, we just lobbed in applications. Yeah. We're like, okay, let's see. And then you end [00:41:00] up winning it and you're like, oh my gosh.
So that happens. We launched Flouse 2 and it is just, I mean, it takes off immediately. And up until this point, it had been nothing but green lights. And that's something really important for anyone who's risk averse. Like I was as a lawyer, I was constantly checking the data, like constantly, like, am I on the right path?
Do people really want this before I just kept going? And so in our first year. Um, we finished the year a little over a million dollars, and this year, in revenue, in revenue, in our, thank you, in our first year, all direct to consumer, we found that Google was our best platform, which is amazing. That's where, like Google Ads, Google Ads, like a lot of people, Google's not, uh, profitable for them.
It's our most profitable. Because, um. We're a needs based product. So we have people coming back from the dentist being like, I just got that lecture, I need to get this under control. We've all had that lecture. We've all had it. And then they go and like type, you know, best, [00:42:00] best flossing tool or whatever.
And now Flouse pops up. And it is. That has been amazing. And then this year we're already at 500 percent growth from last year. Wow, I can't do that math, but amazing. It's huge. Um, and it's obvious to me that I am creating a category. This is a category. The copycats are coming, Sam. Oh my gosh, but. How do you feel about that?
So be it. I mean, this is a category. So look at the electric toothbrush market, the water flosser market, we have patents, of course. Um, we do have patent protection, but anyone that knows anything about patents will know that there are always ways around patents, unless it's for like a formula. Patents are kind of like a, it's, it's a nice to have, particularly on the design, but utility you can get around it.
But. This is a category, a potentially multi billion dollar category, and something that, we already have one copycat, um, they actually, yeah, backed our Indiegogo campaign, created their own competitive product, and I was talking to Yeti about it, and I was just like, oh, like, I just want to [00:43:00] win, I'm so competitive, I just want to win, and, and what he said, Roy from Yeti was like, You're not going to be a category creator of one.
He was like, in order to be a category creator and a category winner, there must be competition. And he's like, it would be concerning if there was not competition with what you're doing. And so he's like, use your competitiveness for speed of execution and excellence. That's all you can focus on. The best product wins.
And just having that mindset of like, Yeah, this is, this is a category. And I just want to be the market leader and corner the market and create this oral beauty space where when people think of electric flossers, they think of Floss. And I hope there's other competitors that come in because it's only going to create further validation and awareness.
I see so, when you're talking, I see so much, you know, you've been on this journey for a long time, but I see so much excitement and drive and like purpose behind what you're doing and just like how badly you want this, right? I want it so bad. Like, I can really see it. Does that make you, [00:44:00] um, like, that feels like a lot of pressure to put on yourself as well.
I feel like I'm quite similar. Yeah. And I, like, feel that pressure. Me too. On my, like, that I'm putting on myself. No one else is putting it there. Do you feel that? Often, yeah, totally. And like, you know what, sometimes I'll have to check myself where I'm pushing for a deadline and there will literally be moments where I'm like, the only one creating this pressure is, is me.
I'm the one doing this. So then I'll be like, you know what? This is too rushed. We're going to push it out by two weeks. Like, and I have to catch myself doing that and it is so much pressure and we were just talking about like, you know, I, I'm looking for a new coach now because I'm now starting to move from founder to CEO and that shift of now, not only the pressure of, you know, Being a fiduciary of my friends and family's money who I see all the time and knowing that I have people's money that I'm responsible for To creating a growing business that is helping people and then now employees And i'm responsible for other people's [00:45:00] like livelihood.
It's like the it's so Much pressure and it's a really lonely journey. Like there's no one unlike a corporate job There's no one telling me i'm doing a good job you know, it's just me being like You When I look back and I look at my investor updates, I'm like, Oh my God, I'm kicking ass. And I literally, I took in our, my investor update.
I'm not kidding. I put it into like a chat GPT thing just to see what would come back. And the summary was like You're crushing it. And I was like, Oh my God. Yeah, I was like, Wow. Okay, great. You know, I love that you like gave yourself an AI performance review. I was like, what is it like to tell me I'm doing a good job?
Let's see what the internet says. Well, I didn't, I was gonna be totally fine if it said I wasn't doing a good job. Like I was totally fine with whatever it came back with. I just wanted to know like an objective thing, looking at the data, like what's the narrative of this? And the narrative was like, You have found product market fit, and you have a potential category on your hands, and I was like, okay But the pressure is hard and now being a solo founder [00:46:00] It's like I don't really have someone to like shoulder it with anymore And it's a lot of internal like and I'm just building confidence I think confidence in my decision making like I'm sure like you where you've made decisions And then it's like a muscle you're building the more it turns out to be And I'm like, I'm just going to keep doing that.
But yeah, I mean, this is, I'm, I'm meant to be creating this and doing this. So I kind of feel like I have no other option. Like this is it, you know, I'm like, all right, like, and if it fails, I'm going to fail huge. And if it's, if it succeeds, I'm going to succeed big, you know, and God forbid, I can always go back to being a lawyer.
I hope not. Oh my God. You're not going to have to go back to being a lawyer. I think things have been working out. Okay, let's talk a little bit about, you mentioned you're building out your marketing funnel. I'm just like, I'm drilling down on the details here. I want to know like, what, what is that marketing funnel?
Yeah. Like what's working? What are you doing? Great. So first we focused on direct to [00:47:00] consumer. So purely meta Google ads. Yeah. That's all we were doing. Goes to our website. Appreciate it. We fulfill each order. Then we layered on CRM, so um, email management. So you know, we've learned that it's five times, uh, more expensive to acquire a customer than keep a customer.
And a lot of this game is retention. And so then we started investing in email marketing. So not only were we retaining customers, but then some people that might have been on the fence, we were kind of getting them down at the bottom. Question for you, I need to jump in. And people are not buying like 20, like.
of these electric forces, right? Like they're, So we have some, we, um, sell bundles and we have a lot of people will buy it for like, um, themselves and their significant other or their family. Okay. But for the most part, they buy single unit and multiple heads. Got it. So we have a razor and blade model. We have the device, um, and then it comes with 45, uh, recyclable floss heads in the kit and then we have refill bags of 90.
So every quarter you get a refill kit, fully recyclable, we'll, we'll ship it back to be recycled. Got it. So most of the people just buy [00:48:00] one unit, but now they have the subscriptions, right? So we're trying to keep people subscribed so they can continue with their habit building. And then we're also trying to convert. One time purchasers into subscribers, um, and then a lot of people love to, electric toothbrushes are a huge holiday gifting item.
So we knew that people would start gifting this for loved ones. Um, so email marketing was the next thing we started focusing on. And then after we cleared the million dollar threshold direct to consumer, it It became obvious to us that we need to be on Amazon. It became obvious. So we were on Shark Tank, which was an amazing experience.
Which we're going to talk about as well. Yes, we were on Shark Tank in May and I had been told like, you need to be on Amazon before Shark Tank airs. They only give you three weeks of notice. Shark Tank does. So we were scrambling to get ready. We found this amazing agency again through Nori. Courtney introduced me to her Amazon agency.
Um, they're called Crush. They're also based out of here in New York. [00:49:00] Um, and we started working with them and oh my gosh, I mean, it was the most crazy period to get this Amazon store ready to go. But Amazon already, since launching in May, it now has It now has grown to be 30 percent of our revenue. Wow.
Highly efficient, highly efficient ROI on it. It is, um, personal care is, and oral care specifically is our second largest category. Of, and there's this amazing tool that we use, which I recommend for anyone with a Shopify store. It's called No Commerce, K N O, Commerce. It's a post purchase survey that's on the like confirmation page on Shopify.
So not an email. And. Um, we have about, I think, a 40 percent engagement rate with it, which is huge. 40 percent of our purchasing consumers will fill out the survey. And one of the questions we asked is like, what almost stopped you from purchasing today? And the number of people that were saying not being on Amazon.
It was huge. And so we knew, okay, Amazon made a lot of [00:50:00] sense. But I was so nervous because a lot of people were like, the second you go on Amazon, there's going to be copycats and there's going to be blah, blah, blah. We were already having like 000 branded searches a month on Amazon. So we had agencies reaching out just being like, you're losing money not being here.
And I actually talked to Ryan at Jolie, um, who's also been someone incredible of a resource. And what he told me, he was like, It doesn't matter whether you're on Amazon or not, if you have a booming business, those copycats are going to pop up on Amazon regardless. And you might as well be there. That's a great piece of advice.
Yeah. What about stockists, wholesale? Is that something you're exploring or strategically just not yet? Strategically not yet. So it was first direct to consumer, now it's Amazon. We've actually just started to layer on some like, um, TV, live TV things like Good Morning America, The View, That has been going incredible, incredible, 20 second feature, huge, like huge, paid spots.[00:51:00]
So we just, uh, they take, it's a revenue share, they take 25 percent of the, the sales, um, Oh, interesting. But that's basically offsets our CAC, our CAC is about 30%, so it basically offsets our CAC, and then again, we have the refill heads, so it's great because then these consumers have to come back to us, but this live TV, the, the product just does so well on TV, And we also have learned through also no commerce as well, that 30 percent of our customers are over the age of 60 years old.
We have a very large senior audience and that's because they lack fine motor dexterity. So whether it's arthritis, cerebral palsy, MS, stroke, um, it makes traditional flossing with a floss string and floss pick very difficult. Physically impossible. So we have a really large senior audience. So I'm getting really excited about next year about the different things I'm going to venture into.
So I think next year we're going to be focused on small box retail. So like Nordstrom's, Anthropologie, make sure that, um, our marketing makes sense, the logistics, [00:52:00] um, something I've heard from a lot of founders who have jumped straight into retail. And it's something that Yeti had told me as well, because I told them we were getting a lot of inbound and they were like, Retail can just as quickly make a bit kill a business as it can make a business because it's one thing to have buy in It's another thing to have sell through Just because you get bought into a store doesn't mean you're gonna sell through and if you don't sell through you're done And also the cash outlay to support that inventory is So much.
It's a huge financial burden. And so Next, you're going to be doing small box retail and then hopefully in 2026, we're looking at big box like Target, Sephora, Ulta. That's my hope. And, um, currently too, we have a little bit of wholesale going on with dentists. So we sell directly into dental offices. We have an ambassador program.
Um, and that has been so fun because you brought up the brand, but our brand, like in the consumer product space, it's cool. It's fun. In the oral care space, it is like [00:53:00] so revolutionary because it is so stale and boring and Flaus is so fun and so cool and a lot of these hygienists are young women who are like, I want to be treating my oral care like it's my beauty and self care.
And so I really feel like we're, we've been like scratching an itch that I didn't even know existed. I was scared going into these dental conferences of like, are we gonna get judged because we're not like super professional? No, crowds. Crowds. So it's been amazing. And we love our dental community. Wow.
Yeah. I want to talk about Shark Tank. Yes. You mentioned Shark Tank. How'd this come about? And what's the impact been on your business? Yes. So another great thing with Indiegogo is that's how Shark Tank discovered us. So they will send out headhunters on Kickstarter and Indiegogo to just kind of poke around to see like what's hot, what's cool.
They had reached out to us in 2021 and it was a really difficult decision for me to pass. I was, we were not ready. We did not have a functioning product. And there's so much about this is the timing. Yeah, [00:54:00] that stuff lives forever. It lives forever. You get one shot and to have some sort of like faith or this abundance mindset that this opportunity will come around again.
Because I think a lot of people are like, I have this opportunity. I need to jump on it now or else I'll never be here again. Versus like, it has to be the right opportunity at the right time. So I passed in 2021 and then in 2022, we got selected to do the South by Southwest pitch competition, ended up winning that.
I went to this TikTok party and Mark Cuban was there and he was surrounded by all these people. And then one of the VCs I was with, he pointed out his manager. So I went up to his manager. Whatever, whoever he was. And I was like, I'm Sam. I have this amazing product. I'd love to talk to Mark. And this guy was like blacked out, wasted, like wasted.
And I was like, Oh, okay. I'm not gonna be like, no one was home, but I got his name. So then the next day, this VC actually gets me Mark's email. And it's like, Hey, you just might as well shoot him an email. So I shoot him an email with the subject [00:55:00] line saying like manager's name said you needed to floss more.
And then gave a little pitch about flowers. Cute. Mark Cuban responded back within 32 minutes. He cc'd the executive producer of Shark Tank and was like, we need to get you onto Shark Tank. This would be an amazing product. I have chills. And then he then dropped off, did not communicate with him again. I make it through all the rounds and like, They really wanted Flouse, which was so exciting.
Like it was so great. Like I could miss some of the deadlines and they're like, whatever, just get us like, this is just what we need. And so I then got selected to film on in September and it was that this is where I met Becca from Fish Wife. We were in the same filming pod. It was Patrick Schwarzenegger, me and her.
We were the first three. And I remember her and I sitting in the van. It was like five in the morning and we it was amazing. And I went out there and I went alone, obviously, and it was like a dream come true. I remember standing in front of those Shark Tank doors and they opened and it was [00:56:00] like, I don't know if you have these moments where you're like mental, like taking mental photos.
I'm like, this is happening. Like, I feel like I've manifested this and I'm here now. And you walk through the doors. There's no music playing, by the way, so it is awkward. It's silence, and you like walk out, and you're out there for an hour. They only air 10 minutes of it. Out there for a full hour, one take, and you just go.
And so, um, you can check out the episode. It was the season finale this past May, and I ended up having a bidding war. And I ended up getting a deal with Candice Nelson of Sprinkles Cupcakes. I knew I wanted her before I, as soon as I knew she was my guest shark, I knew I wanted her because she's so female empowerment.
I grew up in Southern California where Sprinkles Cupcakes started. I grew up with it and I just loved what she stood for. And just being out there, it was like, they're hammering you with questions all at the same time, and they're trying to get their sound bites in while you're getting yours in, so you're like performing in the middle of someone else's performance.
[00:57:00] It was just, it was, it was crazy, and then as soon as you're done filming, You don't hear anything until three weeks before you air. And just because you film doesn't mean you're going to air. So I, so Becca filmed right after me. She ends up airing in January. So Patrick and I are freaking out. We're like, she already went.
Are we not going to air? But I was like, No way are they not gonna air Patrick Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver like I was like no way So it made me feel a little bit better that he hadn't heard yet And then we found out in april that we were going to be the season finale And wow three weeks though three weeks.
We ordered it was the it was the biggest sprint of our lives It's like q4 on steroids. You're like because you don't know what to expect I'm talking to nicole at kinfield beck at fishwife sabina at doe i'm trying to get as much You I love this, like, founder network helping each other. It's like, if you've, if you've been on the show, if you have experience.
Exactly, help me. Yeah, just reaching out to this network of, of people who are willing to help. And for [00:58:00] example, um, one of my friends I'm working with, um, he just told me, Oh, I'm, I'm potentially working with this other girl.
She's about to air on Shark Tank. He told me this on Wednesday. And I was like, Oh, when's she airing? He's like, this Friday. And I was like, give this girl my number. I talked to her on Thursday, sent her our entire SOP on Notion of what we did. It's like, you know, It's just so important to be giving back to other, particularly female founders, because I feel like I have really struggled to find female mentors.
80 percent of my investors are all men. It is really hard to fundraise from women, um, and so I feel a big responsibility to like help other founders, but anyway, so it was three weeks before we were like, okay, we're Ordering all this inventory, we were making random forecasts, we're getting our 3PL ready, we're getting PR ready, we were doing packaging inserts, we were doing SEO, because we needed to start bidding on Shark Tank Flosser, like, there's so much strategy that goes into it because you want to try to get as much, like, juice out of a squeeze, right?
It's not just the show, right? It's like all of the clips and the content and [00:59:00] everything afterwards. Exactly. And it, there's about a six to eight week halo effect and that's what we had been told. Um, and we were told to expect to do at least our best month in revenue and like incremental. So leading up to that, we were expecting to do our best month up to that point was about a quarter million dollars.
It was right before. So I was thinking, okay, if in May, if I can get to a half a million dollar month this month, like, okay, great. We did a half a million dollars in four hours. In four hours. We sold out of 10, 000 units in five days. It was, we were sold, and this was our third or fourth time being sold out, but it's really hard because inventory is so expensive and it's like, you know, we're just trying to keep up with all this demand.
But it was crazy. so overwhelmingly successful. It was like amazing. And now I have Candace as an investor and I get now I'm part of the Shark Tank community. Like they have Shark Tank alumni reunions with the founder of Poppy and Bala Bengals. And like, amazing, it's this amazing community. And so, and now also it's like, [01:00:00] um, that stamp of credibility as seen on Shark Tank.
And it opened up up to a new network of like mid, Western moms, because we're typically very bi coastal, our customer. But I will say that consumer was very interesting. More fickle consumer. Our typical consumer is a needs based customer. This was a wants based customer.
So this was a customer that wanted it now. And when we sold out. It was, we had to do a lot of, transparency and communication and keeping them updated. But Indiegogo, where customers waited nine months for a product, were very well equipped. Is this so interesting how, depending on which channel the customer comes through, what their expectations are.
100%. Oh my gosh. I mean, it's, it's. It was a lot. We had to bring on customer service people to help us and, you know, and like, luckily our 3PL, they like, worked all weekend to get these orders out, but it was just so massive and now, you know, it drops kind of back down, but you now have a new normal. So, like, our [01:01:00] conversion rate has been lifted since it, and it's just, it's so amazing how Shark Tank can come about and, and then, um, You know, we had someone at one of the biggest dental insurance providers see us on Shark Tank and reach out and you just never know who's going to be following along on your story 10 out of 10 recommend.
It was amazing. Can we do a coaching call together for the community? I would love that. Yeah, I think this would be, I think everyone would love it. I'll put a link in the show notes, everyone. Yeah, that'd be great. We'll do it in the group chat. Oh, that'd be amazing. Because I know, like, I'm listening to you, I'm listening to your story, I'm trying to like prompt with the questions, but I know people are listening.
Wanting to ask you like very specific, 100 percent stuff that we're not going to get to on the show. So we'll, we'll do that. We'll put that in the, in the group chat. But the last thing I want to ask you is for some resources, resource recommendations, stuff that's been helping you as you've been building Flouse and you recommend other founders go and check out.
Yeah. So one of the things, a great resource that I found when I was starting to build Flows, it's called 1 800 D2C. So 1 800 and D2C, an amazing resource to [01:02:00] understand the tech stack that your favorite brands are using. Um, it's just, it, it's an amazing resource. It's free. They also send out yellow notes where they do really in depth founder interviews , like the founder of Caraway or Capsule or Cadence or Lalo, whoever.
And you can go in, so I can type in, let's say, like, um, Bala Bangles. That's who I want to type in. And then I can see all their tech stack. I can see who they're using for loyalty, for retention, for email marketing, for influencer, and. That is just so helpful because you don't have to reinvent the wheel, you just need to find the right resources.
And I feel like that really helped me cut through the noise and it's free, 1 800 D2C. And then finding a great podcast that you can get inspired by, obviously, I'm pretty sure probably most of your listeners listen to How I Built This, I, I got started on How I Built This, listening to the founders of Brooklyn and of Swell, of Away, you know, and it's funny now to see.
The journeys of how things have changed since when they were originally on [01:03:00] it or one of my advisors is Dr. Jason of Theragun and he was just on it doing his, his whole session and um, listening to these podcasts, you can learn so much about, you just notice patterns, but I do remember listening to some episodes where I was kind of like, we were talking about this offline of just like kind of like eye roll, like I, where it just sounds, their journey just sounds so easy that I like that.
But it's like, It kind of would stress me out because I'm like, this is not my experience. Am I doing something wrong? But then getting those other episodes where the speakers were so honest about everything that went wrong and it just, there's patterns to things, you know, humans are very predictable. So that is an finding a resource, like whether it's a podcast, whether it's a book or even like a Slack channel or whatever it is that you can learn from that has great resources.
is, was invaluable. Sam, congratulations on everything you've built. I've loved following you and Flouse. It's so impressive and I'm like so pumped to see what [01:04:00] 2025 is going to bring. I'm so excited. And thank you for sharing your story and being so honest. Yeah, thank you. And thank you for having me and thank you for everything you've built.
Like, your even female founder world, like that's a huge resource for me too. And I've met some incredible women, some amazing connections there and, and like seeing your grants that you post every month just that resource is so so helpful and so thank you for everything you do and you know it's it's impacted my own journey and so yeah I probably wouldn't be here without it.
I love to hear that. Thank you.
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