FFW x Fazit - Aliett
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[00:00:00] Hey, business besties, welcome back to the Female Founder World podcast. I'm Jasmine Garnsworthy. I am the founder and the CEO of Female Founder World, and I have completely lost my voice.
I feel like I've introed a lot of podcasts recently saying this, but, , it's been a busy queue for my friends, but today we're chatting with an incredible founder with some very, very interesting. , takeaways and news to bring you. I've got Aliette Buttleman, the founder of Faze It. Welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me. This is a massive full circle moment for me.
You are now entering female founder world with your host, Jasmine
Garnsworthy.
As you walked in, you kind of, like, pulled me aside and told me this crazy story. Can you, can you share it? Yes. So, before even starting FazeIt, I was listening to your podcast, and it has helped me get through the last two years of my business of not having founder friends, feeling alone.
So, first thing in the morning when you have a new episode come out, It's the first thing I'm listening to and [00:01:00] going to summit last year. Unfortunately, didn't make it this year as an Indianapolis all weekend. And the funniest part was last January. I'm in. It's Byron Bay for a wedding. And I had just come back from Summit, so I saw you, I saw your husband there.
I follow you on Instagram, so I know what your family looks like. And I see you guys outside of this cafe, I'm leaving. And I would never do this, but I, I think I grabbed your husband first and I'm like, hi, like just saw you at, at Summit. And then you were taking your baby out of the stroller and I was like, I cannot believe I'm doing this.
And I think I said something quickly, got shy, ran away. Turn to my fiancé, I'm like, I cannot believe I just did this, this is so embarrassing. He's like, no, it's so cute. No way. Are you kidding? That is, people do not come up to me all the time. Like that is so nice. Yeah, but you're in mom life and on vacation.
Whatever, I'm always in mom life and like, I'm on vacation but I definitely checked my emails at that brunch. So like, you come up and say hi anytime if you're listening to this and we haven't met. I want to meet you. Come up and say hi if you see me. Talk me through your brand. For people that don't know Faze It, what have you built?
I'm one of the co [00:02:00] founders of Faze It Beauty. We are most recently known for our viral glitter freckles worn by Taylor Swift a few Monday football nights ago. Amazing. Um, but beyond that, we are building a beauty brand that's innovating the application of both skincare and cosmetics and providing confidence boosting results instantly at the same time.
For everyone who's listening, you want to hear the Taylor Swift story. I know. And we're going to get to it in a minute, but. Like, what brought you to starting a beauty brand? Why did you want to do this? You started in 2022, right? I started in 2022. So you're, like, not that old. A couple years old. No, but we've been on the entrepreneurial journey for a while, um, was in the fashion industry for 10 years, went to school in New York.
When I graduated, somebody introduced me to my now co founder. She was making potions in her NYU dorm room, doing Reiki, yoga, and making, Clean skincare, my kind of gal. Yes. Uh, she, we met at the wing and we had a little business chat. We were not friends. And I was like, [00:03:00] I want to help you take your business to the next level.
And we launched into retail, had press, went on a little journey together and COVID happened. Everybody was launching a clean beauty brand. The space became saturated. We were bootstrapped and we wanted to do something 50 50 together. So she convinced me to launch a company. I never thought I would do this.
I always said, I want to be on the back end of things and not have my skin in the game. And. I think I needed to create an outlet during COVID. Yeah. We started this, um, in 2022 and now we're here. Wow. Okay. What did you start with? What was like the first product that you brought to market? We launched the first extra large multi shaped acne patches and then the first nose pore patch made of hydrocolloid.
Okay. And then, um, In fall of 2022, you got a little bit of funding, were you, were you just purely using like your savings and what you were earning through other [00:04:00] work in the beginning before that? Exactly, so I was still consulting on the side and my co founder was, yeah, and my co founder was running her other skincare company.
I think together we put 13, 000 to spend on inventory and packaging. That was it. We had no money to do anything else. And we started with our first product, built up some traction on social media. Tik TOK was a bit new to companies and we figured it out pretty quickly and we're able to make a community on there.
And a few months later, we. Got accepted into an accelerator program and received our first funding. Amazing. What was the accelerator program? It's called Capital Innovators. The story to how we got there is we wanted this to be a funded company. It was very sexy to raise VC three, four years ago. And we were rejected from everybody, but we had one man who was like, let me put you in touch with this accelerator program.
I know in the Midwest probably did five [00:05:00] interviews with them. They kept calling us every week. And we were taking so many of these calls that it was just part of the process for us at that point. And then they were like, Oh, you've, you've been accepted. And we were the only female, uh, company of four other male founded companies in this program.
Wow. And so you've got 50, 000 in funding from there. Yes. What did that go towards? So it was actually 100, 000 convertible note. Okay. 50 percent of it went to the program and we got to keep 50%. Okay. So that 50, 000 was new product development. So we were able to launch new more innovative SKUs. We were able to have a refresh on branding on the website.
Just be able to like move that traction along. I'm so curious about the the learnings that you have and just people in general from you go out like you go out into the world with this one product you think this is gonna be the thing and then often like a few Years later your brand and your product is totally different and the brands that win are the ones that listen to that feedback and make Those quick changes.
What was the [00:06:00] feedback that you were hearing that drove that decision? The change that we see in the brand today, and what was that change? I think it was less feedback and more gut intuition. We, I think from a VC perspective, we were checking off all the boxes for them. They wanted a new category in consumer beauty, right?
So we did that. Yeah. We were disrupting social media, which a lot of brands weren't able to figure out. We were going viral. We weren't spending any money on advertising. Hit every single box, except for generating revenue. So it felt like we had all the makings to be successful at that time. And what I've taken away now with cosmetic products is the consumer doesn't always want that problem solution product.
They want the aspirational product. Our skincare patches work amazing. Like, they are literally solving a problem. Our customer has gravitated to a product that instantly makes them feel beautiful. Yeah. So what are the products now that are working really well for you? Is our makeup patches. It's a [00:07:00] new category.
We wanted to make it easier for people to apply makeup, have intricate designs on their face, not need to be a YouTube beauty blogger or a makeup artist. Okay. So like what kind of things talk me through, I'll go to your website. I want to buy something. What am I going to see? Yeah. You're going to see our faux freckle makeup patches, uh, for that natural, you know, trending freckle look right now.
So you literally put the patches on, take them off and you've got, Dab a little bit water, cloth. You can get messy with it. You can put it on top of makeup or not wear makeup at all. Uh, you can apply makeup on top of it as well. And then we wanted to create a more novelty freckle product, which has a metallic, we're calling it glitter freckles.
The Swifties have been calling it that as well. It's not glitter. It's just a metallic look to it. Amazing. Okay. I want to talk about retail a little bit. So like I understand how you've had this shift into Following your own intuition about what product's gonna work, what the opportunity is, and I'm guessing also like seeing what's hitting as you're, you know, [00:08:00] as you're like, Creating content on TikTok as you're seeing what's selling, but how did you launch into like retail and what was your experience with trying to build out a wholesale footprint for the brand as well?
Back in 2022 before we officially launched Faze It, I knew that Urban Outfitters would be the perfect fit. And I called and knocked on that door many times and it took about a year and a half to get into Urban. I think they have a fantastic curation of indie beauty and I think they're really picking out those early players before the Sephoras and Ultas and Targets of the world, you know, take a leap of faith on them.
Uh, we launched with our ingrown hair bikini line patch, was that spring, summer of 2023 into 10 stores and online. It did well. And then most recently we expanded with them doing 180 of their doors. So that's urban nationwide, um, in Canada and in the U. S. [00:09:00] And the business has expanded. It's been explosive.
We sold 500 units in New Orleans last weekend. Wow. Oh, that's incredible. Yeah. Crazy. I feel like Urban Outfitters is such a good entry into mass retail. Cause like, they're technically mass, but they're more like boutique mass. They like straddle that line where they're also a little bit easier to work with than like going into uh, Target or Sephora or somewhere like that.
So it's such a great place for brands to kind of like figure this out in a lower stakes way because then you're not going to get those crazy like chargebacks and that kind of stuff that you get with the bigger retailers. What were some of the learning curves that you had though when you went into Urban Outfitters for the first time? I can tell you one of mine. Yeah. So I used to have a beauty brand. Closed it in 2020. And we got into Urban Outfitters, like, really quickly. Like, honestly, within six months. Like, everything's a blur now looking back on it. It all feels like a fever dream. But I think it was within six months. And we had a pretty big P.
O. to begin with. Hmm. And [00:10:00] I, like, my pricing was all off and I was like, I can't, like, the, the amount that it's gonna cost to, like, ship this is, like, really eating into the margin here. So, I'm just gonna rent a car and, like, take it to the center myself. And so, I drove, I, like, rented a car in New York City. I drove to Gap, Pennsylvania through, like, Amish country.
And delivered in this, like, Bright yellow car with all of these massive trucks in this distribution center and like backed the car up. They have like a full loading dock, which is like, you, you need a truck to reach it. Right. And like hand deliver like thousands of units of stuff. And that was my first learning.
But like, there's no rule that says you have to use it, but they were like, if it's delivered the way it needs to be delivered. And I was like, this is going to save me like thousands of dollars. And so that's how I did it. That's incredible. Would I do that again? No, no. I'm surprised they didn't like turn you away.
No, they didn't. They were confused. Like they were confused for sure. I love that. They were not [00:11:00] expecting that. But anyway, so I've, I've been there. Yeah. So I think for us, it's advocating for yourself. I knew, so we, when we launched the glitter freckles. In end of April of 2024. It was every founder's launch dream.
We did not have the product in hand. It was still shipping. We sent a few of our friends who were going to Coachella, some manufacturing samples. It was not in the same shape as we have today. Our logo was not on the back. A few of them made content. 10 million views later. We shit on tiktok. Um, on I. G.
Reels, which I'd never experienced by rowdy there. We sell out in seven days. Wow. And then we made our next reorder. I think that was like over 100, 000 units. Oh, my God. That is such a dream. Okay. What do you think the why was this such a perfect storm?
Okay 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 [00:12:00] 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 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 [00:13:00] 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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I think it was the timing of when we launched this product is perfect for concerts and festivals.
Um, it was a new type of product on the market, so people are excited about it. Uh, and Virality doesn't hurt. It was, it was honestly the perfect story. I feel like I've listened to so many guests on your podcast who are like, Oh, I had, you know, multi thousand people waiting lists. I'm like, Oh, how do people actually do that?
And then it happens and you're like, okay, I guess this is possible. It actually does happen. I hear this story all the time and I think it's the people can get really disheartened when it doesn't happen to them. And most businesses are built, by the way, without that kind of like huge virality and it's totally not like, possible, doable, normal to do it that way.
But there does seem to be this thing that [00:14:00] happens when you've kind of been doing this for a while. You've been like listening to feedback, listening to that intuition, adapting, adapting, adapting, and then. So like some products that you release it's like all of a sudden people seem to find this like product market fit and this brand market fit and then they've kind of figured out who their target audience is and it just like The algorithm just like it just hits and you don't know when that's gonna happen Like we haven't gone super super viral before maybe on Instagram we have on a very random video, actually.
It's always the random ones. It's always a random one. And like, we, it didn't like, actually generate much revenue at all. But, you know, so we've built a business without like crazy virality, but I see this again and again of these like, you hit this sweet spot, and then it's like the algorithm gets you, and you just go.
It's also having the foundation in place. Yeah. I think once you've been at it for so long, you have the team, and The learnings behind it to make something like this eventually happen. But back to retail, I think advocating for yourself was really important. And I knew this product was going to be such a hit.
It just [00:15:00] needed to be in stores and it needs to be in all stores. And early on, they're like, we'll put you on dot com. We'll put you in our our best performing stores. And I just had so much faith in us. I said, this is an all or nothing. Yeah, it's all doors or we're not coming into your stores. And there was a lot of pushback on our packaging.
They didn't like our packaging. They wanted us to change our packaging. It's like our, I have faith in our packaging. Our customers buying it. Online sales are insane. It's like, again, like it's all or nothing for you guys. And now we are one of their, I think we've ranked highest above even fashion with one of their best performing brands since, uh, All the Taylor Swift stuff has happened.
So again, intuition. That's amazing. Let's talk about Taylor Swift. How did this happen? Uh, nothing is built overnight. Uh, all those clickbait media of, you know, overnight sensation, wasn't the case here. We, we launched this product back in the spring. She was finishing her heiress [00:16:00] tour in Europe. We already had customers buying her product.
Sorry, buying our product to wear to the European leg of her tour. And I was like, we need, this is perfect for her. She needs to wear this on stage. And with most celebrity, like influencer partnerships, like you can't call their PR team. You can't call their manager. They will never answer your emails. But being that I've worked in fashion, I know who is receptive to receiving products or makeup artists.
So I reached out, she works with one makeup artist apparently, and I reached out to her agency. They gave us her address. I sent her product in May, never heard anything else. But the strategy was like Taylor Swift was the goal. I reached out to Sabrina Carpenter's team because she was touring with Taylor.
I was like, maybe she sees it on Sabrina and then she wears it. I sent it to the wives and girlfriends of the chiefs. Maybe she sees it in the VIP box phase. It would be [00:17:00] surrounding Taylor completely. And then one Monday night, my fiance has Monday night football on. I come in the door. I'm checking the phase of beauty Instagram account.
And a creator writes to us and says, I think Taylor's wearing your product on TV and like didn't register yet and a friend sends me page six photo of her wearing it. Dave Portnoy from Barstool Sports tweets about it. Every friend is messaging me. We turn on the TV and I, I'm going to cry now. I start, I start, I start sobbing and.
Thankfully, my fiancé has been on the journey of the highs and lows, and he recognized this is one for the books. He records me sobbing, and I, I cried because I knew what was about to happen. It was third party validation from the icon of our generation. Like, what other, like, [00:18:00] who's a better influencer?
Yeah. And, I think I, you didn't even watch the TV, I called my whole team, it's 7. 30 at night, I would never do this, but I said, guys, I mean, come on, this is like, if you're gonna ever, yeah, pull, pull a, My brother in law, who's in marketing, is at the dining room table, my fiancé is, you know, on Reddit and on Twitter, making sure people are identi Identifying it as Faze It, was up till 3am and everything has changed.
Oh my gosh, I have like full body chills, that is incredible. Okay, this happens, I'm sure, like how do you even sleep? I would like Okay, I haven't, so What did it do to sales, first of all? So, it's been a combination. Yeah. I had 400 followers on my personal TikTok. It, my, everyone makes fun of me, it was so cringe.
No, no views. I post the sobbing video onto TikTok. I leave it alone. I think it has 10 million views. Wow. That was generating most of the [00:19:00] sales day one because people were identifying this was phase it. Yes. I had to contact, I don't know. I don't have a PR team. I contacted every journalist that night saying, this is phase it.
You need to label it as phase it in your article, sending them links to our website and to Amazon. I went to bed at 4am. I probably slept three hours. I woke up at And I hired a publicist and I was like, we need help with all this inbound and making sure people are identifying us. Website traffic and sales were up 3, 500%.
We hit our annual revenue goals for 2024 that day. Wow. And have superseded it since. Wow. That is incredible. Wow. Okay. What's been the long tail effect of that? The long tail effect has been. It's funny, I, day 24 hours in, I feel like we were doing all the right things, but I needed a gut check from somebody I [00:20:00] trusted.
So I called one of the biggest Sephora founders, and um, said, hi, I need 10 minutes of your time. Yeah. This is what's going on, she's like, I'm aware. I said, what do I do? She said, hire a publicist, and leverage this to secure the retailer of your dreams. So the next, like, that's exactly what I did. I Got on the phone with the retailer of our dreams.
They were already aware of it They were like we are going to move mountains for you. They are launching us in six to eight weeks. This doesn't happen This is a secret. So this is still a secret People are gonna guess it. Well, we'll see actually drop it drop it in there drop it in the group Yeah, you think they're launching with yeah But they were willing to move mountains for us.
And if you've been through this retail Conversations you have these conversations for a year. Yeah Nobody is, like, they've done their planning already, they're not slotting you in. I mean, we are getting a side cap dropped in to thousands [00:21:00] of stores. Wow. I mean, this is a dream. Wow. Okay, guys, we just all need to get Taylor Swift.
I know, I know, I know. All of our problems will go away. This is, like, not fair. No, this is amazing. It's like, you know the saying, and it's like, Luck is when planning meets opportunity or something like that. This is exactly, I think, an example of that. And that's what I've been saying. People said, Oh, how did you not sell out?
Or how have you been handling inventory? I said, we were ready for this. We had laid the foundation. I have the team built that when this type of moment would happened. We could capture it. Yeah, we've had viral moments before so this is not new to us. Obviously, she's amplifying in a totally different way Yeah, but beyond retail it's also been Partnerships, I've reached out to so many brands in the past being like you want to do a collab.
It's like ghosting No, now it's fortune 500 companies reaching out. We did a collab with elf a few weeks ago Insane amazing. We did a soul cycle [00:22:00] collaboration during the heiress tour in Miami You The NBA, the NFL's reaching out. Okay, how does somebody replicate this? Someone's listening and they're like, I, you know, it's probably, maybe it's not Taylor Swift or, you know, but like, how do you identify that person who's gonna move the needle for you that you need to endorse your brand or get involved in some way?
And then like, how do you reach them? Like, what's the lesson here? I think it's product market fit for a celebrity or influencer endorsement. Like we knew from the beginning she was the perfect fit for this product, but it didn't have to be her. Like let's say it's somebody. Not as famous. Maybe it's a micro influencer of making sure like they're speaking to that same community that is already your community.
And I think there is just that natural and organic alignment that occurs. I think just like plucking a celebrity to have one on your team is not necessarily going to move the needle. The early days [00:23:00] for us, we did experience a lot of TikTok virality. And the strategy there was, let's get our product into the consumer's hands.
If you are dealing with acne or specifically ingrown hairs, or maybe you have already been, , trying out applying freckles to your face, we're going to seek you out. We're going to gift you product. And I've already like tapped into that niche community who's followed by other people who are interested in those concerns or, or beauty trends as well.
On the backend, how do you manage your like, Content planning and strategy, your influencers seeding, like what does that look like? Are there systems, tools, like what are you using to make that work for you? No, there are. I was really scrappy in the beginning of, I kind of did it all. Um, we have a virtual assistant that, um, I tell her who is in like the niche and the different buckets of who is the perfect influencer.
She reaches out, we just do, you know, gifting and seeding. We don't usually pay [00:24:00] influencers. If I have felt that's a little bit inorganic to the brand for us, they're not really speaking like a customer who loves the product would, , for social media until two weeks ago, I edited everything for tech talk and posted everything.
I just felt like I had the pulse of the brand and it just came more natural if I've posted it from our point of view. Now we have a social media manager who is handling everything, um, from, you Instagram to TikTok. She's planning. We are just approving what she's planned. So now there's more systems in processes in place to make this a bit organized.
What does your team look like? You mentioned a social media manager, a virtual assistant. Are there other people, freelancers, agencies, full timers? Like, what does it look like? Yeah, we try and keep it lean. We were very scrappy. Same. Yeah. I mean, everyone should be. It's my co founder, Nina Labruna and I, we just hired our social media manager who was part time to finally be full time.
Congratulations. Thank you. And [00:25:00] beyond that, virtual assistants to help. with customer service. We've had to hire four now because customer service has been insane. Wow. If anybody has recommendations for customer service, we need that. But, um, we have virtual assistants who are handling, you know, bookkeeping at the end of the month just to make sure everything is organized.
We have a paid media agency who handles meta, Tiktok and Google. Is that a big channel for you? Huge. Um, yeah. Tick tock first. It's been learning lessons of how to make that profitable and how to see the same row as you would see on meta. , and then Google has just been really supplementary to the paid media strategy.
Uh, we have a packaging designer who does all of our packaging and then we have an artist and graphic designer who does, you know, all the designs of the actual product that we work with. Would you recommend, I mean, and we can drop this in the group chat later if you want to, but if you're happy recommending any of [00:26:00] those people that you work with and you think are great, we can drop them in the group chat after the episode as well.
Okay, this is an amazing story. After you've raised that 50k, we're talking this is like more than two years ago now. How have you been funding the business since then? You did a friends and family round? So we raised the 50k from the accelerator program. We were able to launch the new products that I think that we knew were going to give us the traction to take this to the next level to secure the urban outfitters of the world and then we needed more money and We realized that VC approach just did not work for us, and I was actually sitting at a beauty independent panel listening to Founders who have founded over three companies and exited them and their advice was high net worth, women, yeah, individuals, but specifically women.
Yeah, especially with beauty. Yeah, they want to feel a part of something, angel investors, they were like, we would never go a VC route again. Yeah, so that's what we did, and at that [00:27:00] point in the business, I had the confidence of, I wasn't asking for a handout from friends and family, if I was at this place to ask them, it was because I had no doubt that we would succeed.
So it was a mix of our parents, friends who were angel investors, friends who wanted to invest for the first time, friends who were retired from beauty companies and wanted to test out investing for the first time as well. So we raised, um, About a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and then last spring when we launched the makeup patches I knew that our runway was only like five months left as in that's how long the money that you had was gonna lie Exactly.
So this past August we would have had no money in the bank account And we're trying to figure out, do we raise again? And then that's when everything exploded with the makeup patches. Thankfully that we haven't had to raise, we're bootstrapped. We work off our cash flow. We are not planning on raising.
We've had [00:28:00] VCs and private equity groups reach out to us already. And we're just really confident with where we're at right now. Amazing, good for you. Thank you. I want to go back to talking about retail because, you know, we mentioned that there's this big retailer coming in December that we're not going to.
Talk too much about but there's another big retailer. That's launching like now. Yes. What is that? How did that yes? So over the summer, I'm on vacation and I get an email from post Taylor. It's pre Taylor retail, which is interesting Rome was not built overnight. So a lot of what we were working on was already in the works Before Taylor Swift were the product so CVS emails us and we had talked to CVS two years ago We're like, please bring our room Acne patches in to your stores are perfect.
And I think they had a sense we were just too small for them at that point. And we were working with the spire who was amazing and she really had faith in us. We stayed in contact and she [00:29:00] reached out and she was like, so I went to founder made and in my swag bag was your new glitter freckle products.
And I've never seen anything like this. Can you jump on the phone tomorrow to get on a call? And these calls are usually introductory or introducing your brand and what you've built so far. And she was like, no. So we're launching a new beauty initiative. It's called, Basically like trial and travel in the front of checkout, but one whole aisle dedicated to new and emerging beauty brands.
Wow. Very cool. She's like, we have so many data points on this is how customer, we think customers are going to be shopping this year. Are you interested? And at first, like we really wanted to hold out maybe for those other guys that we were speaking with. Mm-Hmm. . And she, she got the product, which was so important to me, but also said, we have the most stores.
Of any retailer. Yeah, like if you want mass and if you want to get your product into as many people's hands as possible And really make your mark. This is how you're going to do it fast [00:30:00] If another retailer calls you it's going to be one year until your product is in stores. Yeah, so we're launching our best seller Um in about 500 stores for right now I think they might roll out this program to about 1500 more stores And yeah, it will be our first mass retailer.
And did we say what the retailer is? CVS. CVS. Sorry. I don't know, maybe we did. Maybe we did. That's incredible. Thank you. Thank you. I want to ask, like, but before you get into this mass retail space, your pricing needs to be right. Like, your, your costs, your pricing, your margins need to be set. Otherwise, it just doesn't work.
What are your lessons around that? And, like, what are those margins and those costs that you need to, like, figure out for anyone who's That's the goal. That's what they want to get. What needs to happen on the back end? So I For your cost for that to happen. I talked to my friends who are looking to [00:31:00] start businesses for the first time, and they're telling me about the product.
And I asked them, where do you want to be in retail? Yeah. You need to think about that first. And for us, we knew we wanted to be mass and drugstore. So we made sure that our products were affordable. I think we're more at this like mastige price point. 1599 is like average for our makeup products and that's a little bit higher than most drug, but I think a lot of drug and mass retail are starting to take a chance on these new and emerging beauty brands that are a little bit more expensive just to have more interesting products and brands and their curation.
But you need to think about, um, Markdowns from retailers. If you have a display, what that would cost. What is your shipping cost looking like? How much is your 3PL or your warehouse? Because when you talk about markdowns, if a retailer goes on sale with your product, They're not cutting into their margin.
They're charging you for that cut. Exactly. A lot [00:32:00] of these mass retailers also have advertising programs, gift with purchase, and that's on you. Yeah, and they expect you to do it. 100%. You can't opt out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of this stuff where you just have to have that buffer built in. But what I recommend is, For anyone looking to go into mass retailer, hire a broker.
It is the best thing we've done. How did you find a broker? One of our advisors had recommended them. The old recommendation and the intro. I know. And we don't have an operations person on our team right now. Nina and I don't have previous experience of mass retail. You cannot mess up the first time. So if you're paying a percentage to a broker or some type of retainer, you It is worth it.
They are forecasting for you. They have an in. They've done this before. For the broker we're working with for the retail announcement in December, they are across the street from that retailer. So there is just a line of communication and experience that, you know, it makes it [00:33:00] worth it. And I think a lot of people think about a broker being the person that is facilitating like, The introduction and getting that first order, but it's actually like seeing you through the process of getting you into the store a lot of the time.
It's having that person with the knowledge about what it means to actually fulfill the order and succeed in that as well. Exactly. Yeah, it's beyond the intro. It's somebody advocating for you constantly and knowing the ins and outs of where you're being merchandise. Are there other better places to be merchandise negotiating on terms that you might necessarily not have any insight into that you could negotiate on that?
So highly recommend. How do people find a broker? Yours was through an intro. They're an intro, but you can call them. I'm sure they're looking for any new business. Amazing. Okay. The last thing I want to ask you, Aliette, is for a resource recommendation. We end the show every week with something that has helped you.
It could be a book, it could be another podcast, it could be a course you've taken, but that you think other [00:34:00] people who want to do what you've done should go and check out. Yes, so I thought about this question because I've heard you ask this on all podcasts my resource is not specific It is for everybody.
Okay, so anyone who is a founder if you can spare a thousand to twelve hundred dollars a month Hire a virtual assistant and hire two if you can afford it because as a founder you have Hiccups in your day of technical difficulties, customer service issues, having to call UPS and what that takes up an hour or two of your day, and you're not focusing on driving the business.
These people alleviate all of those issues for you. They are so capable. They are dynamic. They can jump into your team and tackle anything you give them. I've had them working on email marketing flows. I've had them working on customer service, bookkeeping at the end of the month. So just tasks that you don't necessarily want to do or don't have time to do anymore, hire that virtual assistant.
How do you find a good virtual assistant? So we [00:35:00] work with an agency called Synthesis that trains them for you. But I've talked to one of the members in the group chat and she has an agency as well. I believe her name is Grace. Um, so yeah. Okay, they're everywhere. Amazing. I love this. And do you have like one, do you have multiple people with different expertise or do you have like generalists who are doing a bunch of different things?
The agencies help find the right fit for you. Um, so right now we're needing a lot of help with customer service, but before then it was looking for somebody who had experience with influencer marketing or email marketing. So yeah. There's really a right fit in person that they can find for anything.
That is such a good tip. I don't think we've had that recommendation on the show before. Scrappy. I love that. I love it. I'm gonna go hire a virtual assistant. Please. Thank you so much for coming on Female Founder World and congratulations on everything you've built. This Taylor Swift story, I was crying.
I, like, I have tears in my eyes. Like, this is very overwhelming, but congratulations. Thank you. And I can't wait to see what you do next. Thank you. Like, you're only two years old. Thank you for having me. This is [00:36:00] a, certainly a full circle moment for me as well. I love that.
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