Odele

0:00Lindsay Holden:Welcome to the Emerging Brands podcast. Sharing the stories behind brands you'll want to shop next. I'm your host, Kelly Bennett. I am a New York City-based brand strategist for CPG Food and Beverage Brands. In each episode, I'll take you behind the scenes of founders that are building better-for-you products and bringing them to market. it. Also, I talk to brand builders, retailers, industry experts, and tastemakers who help bring those cool products to your shopping cart. You will hear stories of real-life founders, their launch strategies, and practical advice you could use to grow your own brand or simply discover what's next on shelf.

0:42Lindsay Holden:And the best part is you could shop all the brands featured on the show. This podcast is brought to you by Hummingbirds. Hummingbirds is the go-to platform built for creator-powered retail activations. They're connecting everyday creators with CPG brands to generate shelf-level awareness, drive in-store momentum, and generate authentic content in markets that matter the most. Go to hummingbirds.com for all the details and let them know I sent you. Now, let's dive into the new episode. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Emerging Brands podcast with Kelly Bennett. I've been sharing on my Instagram about me finding really good hair products that work with my hair, and it just so happened that today I'm speaking with a co-founder of a very cool new hair care brand.

1:40Lindsay Holden:And Lindsay Holden is the co-founder of Odell. And this brand really caught my attention because they are doing something different in a space where there's so many options, but still feeling like, I'm just speaking for myself, there isn't that many products that check the box for my type of hair. So Lindsay, I'm so happy to have you on the show today. Thank you for having me, Kelly. I'm really happy to be here. Let's good. Well, that's a good start. And I just want to also touch upon the hair care space. It's massive. What was the thing for you that you felt like still wasn't being solved properly or a personal issue you were finding?

2:28Lindsay Holden:I would love to hear just taking a really big step back what you were seeing in the space. Of course. I mean, why does the world need another shampoo? There are aisles and aisles of them. Um, so I think we had to convince ourselves of that first, right? Cause we have that nuance, that itch, that intuition of like, Hey, you know what? Like there there's always this, but when it came to what was on our shower shelves. So for example, um, I was buying the salon brands that were$45 a bottle. Um, my shower was packed cause I have three kids with the kid friendly germ tested kind. And then whatever kind of my husband was using at the time was also adding to that clutter.

3:14And it was really this moment of like, wait a minute, why isn't there that awesome brand that meets my standards for performance, but has really in your words, checked all the boxes that one may think in value at the time. So it's clean. Is it germ tested? Does it do what it says it's going to do? Do I understand why this is for my hair type? And Oh, by the way, is it affordable?

3:41Lindsay Holden:And I think that it's really stood out to me right off the bat brand. When I saw the price points, I'm like, wow, this is super affordable. Yeah. And we like, I am a huge proponent of, you know, crazy good does not have to be crazy expensive, but we, you know, my partners and I just weren't seeing that option at mass in this category specifically. And so we set out to kind of, you know, explore that and say, Hey, what, what would that look like? What, how is it enabled right. To kind of, um, there, there's so many unnecessary divides that also add to confusion in the space, you know, is it, is it really need to be divided by gender?

4:27Does age really matter? Like kind of like who's sharing this product anyway, it is a kind of a commodity, but you have such high expectations over that performance. And those needs are really specific by hair type and texture, not necessarily by your age or your gender. And so I think that is where we're like, how do we, this is a complicated space, but how can we just simplify it and make it really easy to understand? Oh yeah, this is for me. This is what I'm seeking. Um, and I don't need to pay an arm and a leg, uh, to achieve those goals, um, and whatnot.

5:04Lindsay Holden:So really great point. I never thought of it that way of how gendered it is and how it really goes. And age is also a big one. I didn't even think about that, but when you put it in that way and it's really goes back to hair type. Oh, life. What really matters? How do we kind of ease the mind share that needs to be applied? You can think about something else. Yeah. Let's make lives easier. So walk me through, Drew, I know that you're with two other co-founders. I would love to dive into your background first, though. What were you doing at the time when you were looking at the hair care space and saying, wait, we can simplify this?

5:51Lindsay Holden:What was going on? Sure. I had just taken leave, to be honest. So, you know, looking at my history, my background has not been like a very traditional one in hindsight. You know, it's always 2020. It was always retail adjacent. It was always kind of creative expression adjacent. So I hopped around a bit when I decided to move back to Minneapolis. I went to the U of M to grad school. And from there, it's just such an awesome foot in the door to a lot of the big Fortune 500 companies that are based here. And so I had interned at General Mills for a summer from there. After there, after graduating from U of M, I then took a job at Target.

6:35And so I was a merchant at Target for about eight years. And that really solidified my love of retail. It was incredible. And it's such an awesome, like you get to do so much. You own a category. You are trained to kind of look at it year over year. is this, you know, I was always in home, for example. And so I worked in bath, I worked in patio furniture, and it was really like, how do I grow this assortment, develop it from sourcing or internal product development and address kind of the needs of a entire category, right? Within my little store within the store. And it, it evolves so much year over year.

7:16I did that for about eight years. Um, loved it. I had three kids, however, and I think, you know, my, my, I just entrepreneurial in nature. I was like, all right, you know, I don't necessarily see myself on the traditional ladder here, but there's something, there's something more like I would like to do. And I just can't figure that out while I'm still here. And so I'm like, raise my hand with my husband, I'm like, I'm, I need a break, um, to figure out what's next. Um, so I was, it was probably, I enjoyed a lovely summer and that started to get a little like, all right, what is that? What is right.

7:58Um, and, and my partner Britta at the time had been consulting with another hair care company. So we started to look at beauty and we're like, wait a minute, you know, why am I spending$40 on shampoo? Like natural is good for you, but it doesn't feel like effective, you know, in terms of performance or the, the clean and derm doesn't necessarily like give you that performance either. And so there were all these trade-offs that you had to make when you were shopping the category. And we started to, um, dream up what could, um, what could be if those trade-offs were eliminated.

8:33Lindsay Holden:So cool. So what was the early stages that you all took to see, is this possible? And also price point. Yeah. You know, is this possible to actually check these boxes and make it affordable? I would love to hear just really on how you started. I mean, ignorance, right? We, you know, we had to convince ourselves that this was like a good idea. Like it had legs, right. And selling ourselves on it. Like we went through a lot of, you know, positioning, pricing, what does it look like? How does it feel? You know, what does it do? What are the most common benefits? So like some very tangible kind of like, this is what an initial lineup would look like.

9:16And for these reasons, um, clean as table stakes, that's not, shouldn't be a differentiator. It should just be the norm. Um, so we just played, right? Like we started playing, um, and I have a third partner, her name's Shannon, who Britta had met, um, through her consulting job and she was the operations of it all. And so, um, we came up with this concept and we, you know, put some design against it. And we, um, Britta at the time went to the merchant at target to say, Hey, we know you see a lot. We'd love your feedback on this and talk to her about like where we saw this opportunity and how that may come to life, you know, with, with the brand Odell.

10:01And she's like, I'm, I'm interested. Why don't you come back in a few, in a few months and show me like what traction you've, you've gained. And so we, um, we set to work then we, we reversed, pitched it to a manufacturer. We started to develop like, okay, here's the, here are these formulas. These are the benefits they need to address here, your costing goals. But we also knew we needed that scale, um, in order to pass along the most value to the, to the consumer. And that protecting that accessible price point was such like a big part of the value in our offering. Um, and so, and, and we, we knew retail, right?

10:42Like that's right. And at the time it's like D to C is very, it still is. It's an incredible channel against which to grow, but also when you have a big heavy bottle of shampoo and you want to sell for$12, right? It's a hard equation to figure out. So when we're still working at, so that's how it started. We just kind of, it's like one step at a time and oops, did we just get interest from Target and own? Okay. Like, what do we need to do now? And in order to, you know, even get to the point where we can get it on shelf.

11:21Lindsay Holden:So, okay. I'm so intrigued by this because I love when founders are like, hey, can this even happen? And then to get such a great bite right off the bat based on your own experience and network, which is, again, a huge advantage going into CPG. What was the next steps from there of actually having the product now in people's hands? Sure. So we launched, um, we launched with target the following year and about a thousand doors. That was 2020 a month before the pandemic. Oh, okay. That has, you know, that was fun. Um, we're like, cool. What happens if everything goes to zero? Like, what do we do?

12:10But, um, we knew we were going to either, we're going to like, it was going to work is going to fail fast. Right. Um, there was just so much thought and attention and the consumer is so smart, right. It's just like pick up and see you for what you're standing for, which is, you know, immediately, or it's like, okay, all this thought, all this intention behind how to make it easy to navigate, how to make it truly inclusive, you know, how to make it, um, just the experience of the goop. We, you know, we obviously like, you can be a beautiful bottle if the goop doesn't work, they're not coming back.

12:47So we, um, set indoors in 2020. Um, and we leaned in hard on the earned, um, we, I, our first contract hire was PR, you know, to help give me an education. What happened? Like I see beauty written about all the time. Like, how do we get this in the hands of people of influence of tastemakers of reviews? Cause almost like what other people say out of the gates are, is more important than what we say about it ourselves. And so we knew like the most important thing was to really, um, seed, get reviews, earn, like earn the accolades that like put us in the consideration set, um, of, of our target market of our core audience of the people we thought we would appreciate this the most.

13:38Um, so we really leaned into all of that and, you know, obviously discovery at shelf was an awesome, um, awesome opportunity and, um, reinforcing kind of what that, like how we wanted to show up just really authentically and like all the channels that were, um, at our disposal. all.

14:00Lindsay Holden:Absolutely. What type of messaging have you found really resonates the most with consumers? Because you are checking a lot of boxes, which is amazing. But sometimes when you're like, we could do all of these things. Sometimes it's hard to distill down to explain to people because they're not used to saying, oh, wait, I could have all of this. What's the catch? Like what type of messaging have you found has been really helpful for your brand? Yeah, that is such a good question. And honestly, one that we're continuing, continuing to learn from, um, there's like the brand level messaging, right. Level messaging.

14:38There's the product, like, like it is a lot to go through. And it's sometimes depends on like the individual, right. What resonates the most, I think at the highest level. And there's some things that we don't want to say, right. Like we are, we are here to like elevate, like what a mass offering is, right. We can benchmark against brands that are two to three times our price, but I don't want to go around saying like, look at us. We're so fancy. Like, no, you just have to show you show up that way. Right. And those are kind of like the visual cues of like the design language and the bottle and the enjoyment.

15:13Like you'd not, it's not meant to scream at you from the shelf. It's meant to like, look good in your bathroom. And that matters, right. That helps with like a lot of the discovery. I mean, that's how I shop also with products.

15:25Lindsay Holden:I make sure it checks my personal boxes, but also I'm like, well, this look cute in the shower or in the bathroom. Like I'm not consumer that needs it. above it. And so many are right. And, and I love, I love that. And I love, I love when consumers will say like, this works, you know, three times as well as my$60 product, but costs half as much, you know, like, I think it's like those comparisons are the ones that are almost like when you hear it from a friend, it's like, who's in the know, it's like there's no gatekeeping. Like those are my favorite messages. And as a brand, I think we really like lean into keeping that company, sharing, like showing.

16:16I think the showing is as important as the doing, but it's really just kind of that elevated expectation and ease of navigation.

16:26Lindsay Holden:And what you were talking about showing as far as like showing different use cases of the product or different ways people are integrating it. Yeah. And who even like who are and like just the artfulness of the imagery. And like, we're not a brand, like I'm not a stylist, right? I am like, we are like real human users of shampoo. And so it's kind of like this come as you are like this is these are tools and products that just help you do you the best, right? Like healthy hair, addressing your concerns, but it's not like use this and, you know, walk out with like this step style. We always joke about like, oh, we need a tutorial.

17:09It's like, OK, lather and rinse. And, you know, it's just kind of like that embracing who you are. We're not here to tell you like how, what that should be.

17:20Lindsay Holden:And I appreciate ease in a brand. It's something that I really think about, especially when I'm working, I'm a brand strategist for CPG food and beverage brands and any brand I'm working on, especially if it's like a kid focused brand, I'm like, okay, well, base level, we're selling ease and convenience, most likely to parents, right? We have to make sure that this is easy, approachable. And I feel like just more and more people want simplification. Yeah. He's not feeling overcomplicated or they need to read a manual on how to wash their hair. Like, how do I make this simple? And I think about that in food and beverage all the time.

18:03Lindsay Holden:But I will agree that in the hair care, also skin care. Yeah. It's so complicated. I'm like, wait, what do I what am I doing? What am I doing wrong? I feel bad if I'm not doing something like it is that a hundred percent. That's like what we're here to help. Like be like, this does not need to occupy that kind of mindshare for you. Right. But trust that we got you, um, because we have thought of all of these things. Um, and so that's very important to us as a filter. Where do you see the vision of Odell? Like the brand itself. I mean you're five years in which is incredible that's not an easy task and also the wild ride of 2020 where you launched and I feel like we're still finding our bearings of what consumer products look like in the year 2025 but I would love to hear what you see for the future of the brand as well.

19:02Sure. I mean, I think it is so relevant and it's got staying power. Right. And so I think, I mean, ideally we want to become a household name. Like we want that, you know, kind of this value to be synonymous with, you know, I think it's, it's got a lot of legs, you know, we're, we're figuring out like, okay, how do we keep growing responsibly? Right. How do we prove ourselves in new channels? Like there is no shortage of opportunity I see for Odell, whether it is considering a new category to extend into or a new country or a new retail, like there is value to be had, I think, um, and relevance in terms of where we show up.

19:47If we think about, you know, the importance of, um, being accessible, like where are people's behavior is like, where can we go to then make that, you know, be, be accessible in more ways than one. And so I think, um, yeah, there's just, it's, it's almost like, all right. And what, what's the right time? What's the right order? Where do we not, you know, what can we handle? What can we do with like the best level of fidelity that we have the capacity to deliver on?

20:16Lindsay Holden:I appreciate you sharing that. And that leads me into my next question of advice for an emerging brand founder, because especially in the beginning, or you get some traction, there's so many opportunities, but also you want to make sure you're saying doing the right thing, quote unquote, right thing for the brand, but also what makes sense. Like there's so much to navigate and it doesn't necessarily have to be advice based on that, but just what advice would you share with someone who's just getting into CPG? Yeah. Oh boy. I'm sure that could also be its own episode. Yeah, totally. I'm like, it's a lot.

20:57And like, I think it's, it's hard to say no to those opportunities. And I'm definitely the one of my three partners where I'm like, let's go, you know, like, I was like, how much more can we talk about this? But I think it's important to like understand. Right. And, and I guess there's no one right way to do things. So it comes down to like, just being as informed as you can and like trusting yourself, you know, like trusting yourself, trusting your partner is like creating that circle of, um, advisors to inform your decision the best that you can. And I don't mean like formal advisors, but like take leverage the community, whether it's within food or beauty, or, you know, even if you're in beauty and talking to somebody in food who's kind of experienced it to help say like, Hey, I'm thinking about this.

21:50Like, how did that go for you? Or who would you talk to? Or what else might I not be thinking of as I'm thinking about this? Just to, just to gather that information and then make like your own best informed decision on the topic.

22:04Lindsay Holden:That's a really good piece of advice of having those people you trust to bounce ideas off of, but also checking back in with yourself and your team of, does this make sense for us as a person? Can we handle it? Will we do a, you know, will we do a good job? I think based on the capacity we have, the people we have right now, or who might we need in order to support it better. Um, there's just kind of a lot of trying to see around the corners because so many things that you will have to do as a founder are things that you've never had to do before. And so you're like, not going to feel like the best at them, right.

22:45But there's nobody else here to help like to figure it out. And so I think it's just kind of that, um, being curious, um, and open being open-minded, right. Like, like you can be to just kind of challenge your own expectations. So you're not kind of going, you're going into everything eyes wide open.

23:07Lindsay Holden:Something else that you're doing that I think is unique is that there's three partners in the brand. I would just love to know how you all make those decisions for what's right for the brand. Yeah. I mean, it, I think we did it for a very long time because of COVID and the pandemic, like even it's like, it was kind of this core three of us. It's like, we all came at it from dramatically different perspectives, but really respected and were dependent on each other's viewpoints to kind of end up with that better, bigger, like, like this is the way forward collectively. And so we've, it's evolved, like it's like building versus scaling versus scaling again, like it, it totally changes.

23:58And so I think that that was, um, a natural, um, partnership that worked really well for the three of us, but we had to put some better definitions around it when we started hiring and building a team. So we could then, um, empower those people to do what they know and do best. Right. And so that's where we're, I mean, completely transparently still, still working on it. And like the three of us are now, you know, we have some more formality to our company in the form of a board. And we just hired a CEO, to be honest. And so we're like very much still evolving. And we're like, all right, like in this stage and, and all the while protecting kind of that vision and making sure like, as we scale, we can continue to move forward with that, like against that vision and with integrity and still.

24:55Lindsay Holden:That's a huge step forward. And congratulations on doing that and building and kind of like cleaning up the edges, right? Because what's as three people coming up with a cool idea, and then five years in, you're going to need to reset the room, right? Of what makes the most sense. So I appreciate you sharing that because those are the things I really want to put on the periphery of founders who are in the really early stages. Maybe they're working with two friends or them and their best friend, right? And just things to be mindful of as they grow and evolve of some conversations that will probably come up as the brand grows.

25:39A hundred percent. Yeah.