Coco & Eve Sells 600 Hair Masks Every Day: Here's Their Launch Marketing Breakdown

0:00Hey, welcome to the Female Founder World Podcast Podcast. It's Jasmine. I'm the host of the show and the person behind all things Female Founder World. My guest today is a very exciting one. It's Emily Hamilton, the founder of a beauty brand called Coco and Eve. And she has created something really big. And I want to give you just a couple of milestones and achievements, not to give you anxiety about where you're at, but to help you get an understanding of just the sheer scale of what she's created and to help you understand like what these lessons that she's about to share, like where that helped her to get.

0:39So she has an antioxidant face tanning micro mist product. It's one of their best sellers. And since January this year, so January, 2023, we're now in May. So just a few months, that product has made more than$5.4 million in sales. They've sold more than 120 ,000 units. And then another fake time product they have called the Sunny Honey. One of those is sold every 20 seconds. So she is a master at scaling consumer businesses and just such a great person to have on the show and for all of us to learn from. But before we get into the show, I have a couple of really fun announcements. So first of all, we're giving away$1 ,000 at Female Founder World.

1:22It's called the Grant to End Gatekeeping, kind of a weird name. But the idea is that if you spread the word about Female Founder World, if you are somebody who is sharing our resources on TikTok and telling people on TikTok about what we're doing, our events, our podcast, our newsletter, the community, and your post gets the most views out of anyone else who's talking about Female Founder World, we're going to give you$1 ,000. So the competition ends in August. All the details are on the website. I put a link in the show notes, but it's super easy to enter. You literally just make a TikTok and tag Female Founder World and say some nice things about why you love us and you're automatically in the running.

2:04Other things that you'll win as well, you'll get a one-on-one consultation with me for an hour where we will go through brand strategy, community building, basically whatever you want to talk about for your business. That's not actually a service that I offer, so that is not something that you can buy. Another thing that you can win as well as part of that prize package, we are giving away an ad spot on the podcast and in the newsletter. So you'll be reaching tens of thousands of millennial and Gen Z women. And we're going to talk about your founder story and about your business. And again, this is not something that typically is like for sales.

2:41So it's really just my way of saying thank you for spreading the word and not gatekeeping on all of the amazing info we have at Female Founder World. and then the other thing we have coming up this is just my favorite thing to do these in-person events we do them all the time and we have another one coming up this week in new york city at pop up grocer it's going to be amazing we are doing a fireside chat with the founder of pop-up grocer emily schilt and the founder of swoon jennifer ross and i'm going to be moderating that conversation we're going to have gift bags and sampling a bunch of cool women-owned food and bev brands It's going to be a really great night.

3:18It's free like most of our events. So again, link is in the show notes if you want to RSVP for that one. Okay, let's get into the show. You are now entering Female Founder World with your host, Jasmine Grinsworthy. Emily, welcome to Female Founder World. We're going to be talking about your business, Coco and Eve today. For people who aren't familiar with what you're building, what are you guys doing over there? So we launched the brand in 2018 and we had this vision to build this vegan, cruelty-free, really fun, feminine brand. We have hair care, tanning, body care products really under the brand that we've created.

4:02I'm Australian, so I know Coco and Eve. I have a good idea of how big you are. I followed the brand on Instagram. We've got like a million Instagram followers now. But again, for folks who aren't super familiar, what are some like big milestones that you've reach just to help people kind of, I guess, like pinpoint the scale of what it is that you've created? So we've grown significantly over the years. I think the biggest milestone we have this year is growing 40%. This year, really been focusing on a really solid omni-channel strategy. With our new product we've launched this year, it's our new top seller.

4:38We've sold 120 ,000 units in four months. So we are global. US is the biggest market. UK, Australia, Canada, they're our main market. So quite active. Really started with the original hair mask, which we launched in 2018 and we still sell about 600 a day. Wow. Oh my God. Okay. 600 a day is incredible. When you were kind of first getting started, you launched with this one product, the hair mask that you just mentioned. Why was that the first product? And it helped me understand kind of like how the brand and the product line evolved from that single skew. So really at the heart of it, we wanted to create the best hair mask there was.

5:20And really looking at the whole market, we saw this real opportunity in hair care and, you know, it's evolved a lot over the years. But really, if you created the brand in 2015, there was this huge sort of opportunity. You had supermarket brands and you had salon brands and there was really not much in the middle. And we really saw people want premium and high-quality ingredients. They want to be their ingredient conscious. They want to know what's in their products. And vegan beauty was really a movement that's really gathering pace every year. So it really started with seeing that opportunity and creating something original and unique and different to, you know, really stand out in the market.

6:10And so unique packaging, unique colours and that, you know, the feedback from customers about the fragrance and the efficacy and really the story, we felt we could put across a lot of categories. so we move from hair care into self-tanning and body care and we're not going to stop there so this sort of efficacy driven and this ingredient conscious story we sort of weave through all of our products and when we launch them into the market so we've sort of gone across categories and created something really original and different in the market. Talk me through kind of the progress in the trajectory of, you know, from when the business launched through to now, I love to like look backwards and kind of like connect the dots of a business's growth.

7:04So you had, you launched with the hair mask and you launched D2C. Now you've evolved into all of these different SKUs. You have stockists all over the world. You're global. Walk me through like the timeline in like a really brief way about how some of these things all lined up and what came first. So when we first launched, and I think it's still really relevant today, launching direct-to-consumer D2C, I think is a really important way to connect with your consumers and really understand why they love your product, what is important to them and building that relationship. we had a global vision from the beginning.

7:42And so we set out to build this brand and these products that have global appeal. And D2C was our first channel. And then it was really retailers reaching out to us. And hair care and body care are really categories that retailers are still very hungry to bring in new brands and new products and interesting innovations. So I think that was really the evolution and Amazon came after. Today, each channel is about a third. So we are on D2C, we are on retail wholesale channels, and we are on what we call marketplaces. But traditionally, it's Amazon in this part of the world, it's the shoppies. So we put out in the marketplaces.

8:26So it's about a third each. And that was really our goal. So you have that deep connection with the customer, the convenience of being on the marketplace and the reviews, and also building that partnership with retailers because they have a whole new audience that you can reach through them. So we sort of started D2C and that's really at the heart of it and having that intimate relationship with customers. I answer customers still to this day. I read all of the reviews. I really try to get in deep. You know, people love the products, why they don't, what they have, challenges they have. So it's really, really important aspect of the brand.

9:06Early on, what were kind of some of those things that were driving Tractured? You said you were a direct-to-consumer to begin with. How were you getting people to the website? Obviously, you're such a big Instagram brand now, but a lot of brands that launched in 2015 didn't hit the way that you did. So what were you doing to kind of build that direct-to-consumer business in the beginning? So we really thought about how we would show the brand or the product usage online. Like how would people create videos around it? What does that look like? So efficacy and really getting results is really part of it.

9:41But we also have always done accessories. And accessories are about 15 % of our revenue today. We have hair wraps. We have back tan applicators. We have kabuki brushes. and it's really about how they use these accessories to show and use the product and a hair wrap was really important it's in our brand colors so because you can't show the mask on the screen the whole time but you can wear the hair wrap and you can do your makeup so you still have that kind of branding element there we really thought about okay how are we going to visualize the brand online unique packaging unique colors that really stands out and differentiates yourself from what's on the market.

10:23I think at the end of the day, when people try the product, you want these positive reviews, you want that feedback. So the product has to really match up to what you say it's going to do. And it has to really wow people to stand out. I love the idea of thinking about different ways that you can like visually represent the brand in content without specifically like having your product there the whole time. I feel like that's really clever and something that a lot of brands I think are struggling with, especially with, you know, TikTok right now where it feels like anything that's pushing product too hard doesn't perform well, but then you want to have your product front and center because otherwise why are you creating the content to begin with?

11:02And so this feels like a really clever, like nice way to create that kind of like organic content that is brand aligned, but isn't pushing. No, it definitely worked for us. So then came the wholesale piece of the business. when you were first kind of exploring who to launch with who did you decide would be the right launch partner and like why why did you decide to go with them so it was interesting and lucky for us where we did get a lot of retail partners reaching out to the brand is that because you were like doing you know you're like popping off on social and getting lots of press coverage exactly that was the reason we're getting that coverage huge and and because we had limited skis and it's taken us years to to build those skis to getting shelf space was difficult and we've been self-funded so all the profits go back into the business in that way building the wholesale channel has been a little bit slower and it's really year five we're seeing a hundred percent growth because we're sort of we add on And they're mostly e-commerce retailers.

12:07So we chose Ulta. We really went for Ulta in the US because where hair care is, you know, a lot of hair care brands is with Ulta. So we launched with them. We just launched into Boots this year and we're launching in Space & K in the UK in two weeks. So it's taken years to get this space and to get onto those retailers. And actually Space & K was interesting. We did reach out to them for many years and it's really the customers going in store and asking for the brand where they did reach out to us. So, you know, it's happened. It happens both ways. But, you know, really persistence and finding different ways to pitch your brand and getting onto the right person is important.

12:51And, you know, we've been with Altar since really the first year and we only went in store with them this year. We were online with them for three or four years. And, you know, finally this year we made it in store. What is the turning point? Like what is Ulta looking for in terms of trying to bring a brand from the dot-com through to their physical retailer? Oh, it's a real challenge. It's not an easy solution. I wish I knew, but they've been so successful. They are such a great partner. And, you know, these days you have a lot of competition. So don't worry. Just keep pitching and look at their news.

13:28what are they looking for what's important and to craft your presentation to that also we showed them results for our brand on amazon we're quite active on amazon so you know that you know those figures help them to really see the potential in the brand and the launch this year with them has been hugely successful we launched into 450 doors and now they've offered us another 400 so So it was worth the wait, but it wasn't easy to get them over the line. So that's just part of it. You've just got to believe in yourself and believe in your brand and keep finding ways to get in front of them. A lot of brands in the female founder world community, like there's a lot of chatter around retail and getting into retail now.

14:18I think that maybe five years ago or more, brands could kind of rely on launching on the website and putting money into paid ads. And that's just kind of not the play now. People understand that you need to have partnerships with retailers to be able to really succeed. And the brands in the community are constantly talking about, okay, but like, what do I put in my pitch? How do I stand out in that email? Do I need to get an introduction? Can I just cold email a buyer? How does that outreach work? What are some of the best practices that you've learned after kind of being in this space for so long now?

14:52Great question. And I definitely agree. it's gotten harder over the years and I say and definitely from other founders as well you have to try to get in person and so I go to Cosmoprof, I go to In Cosmetics, I talk to our manufacturers and they have connections too so a personal connection, a personal introduction is really important. Also through hiring so we recently hired a retail director and she's secured us a really big retailer coming in September. It does take time to so building up your other channel, your direct, your Amazon and really having this omni-channel strategy I think is important for every market but some markets do lag behind getting that big retailer but it does sometimes take time so definitely go to these big expos and conferences and try to network and meet people.

15:52It's definitely a good place. Okay, great tip. That IRL connection, make sure that you're networking. We're kind of like moving through all of your distribution. So I've got to end this part of the conversation by asking about Amazon and what is making your business so successful there? What is working and what advice do you have for folks who are maybe just getting started with their Amazon strategy or like they're trying to do it? It's not quite hitting. What works on Amazon right now? So we've built a team in-house and we worked firstly with a freelancer and I think, you know, that was really key for us.

16:31She was an expert and she was very skilled with Amazon and it worked hand-in-hand with our direct channel. And so having influencers and paid media and gifting and all of that, you'll see these synergies between the direct channel and the amazon but you also need to have a professional amazon expert i am not that i'm a marketing and branding person i don't know amazon to be honest but i worked i met through a connection at someone who's very good at amazon and since then we've built it in-house we don't use agencies but if you have a good agency or you no good connection. I think that's really the way to go, but you do need to have an active direct channel that we've seen, do PR, do affiliates.

17:19And we know you will see that spillover on Amazon and that expertise, you know, you can build that channel. Is there a specific reason why you don't work with agencies? Is it just a preference to have people in-house or have you found that that's not as successful? Like what's the, what's the reason about not going through an agency? Because I know from the beginning, it's really been part of our strategy to build as much in-house as possible. So we believe that dedication to the brand. On a previous business, I did use an outside agency and it took three days to make changes. And when it's in your office, you can make a change.

18:00You just go over to the seat and go, hey guys, come on. And so you can get changes very quickly and be way more dynamic. But that's our personal experience. And working with a freelancer, you know, if you have that good relationship and they believe in your brand and you as a person and what you're building, they'll really be dedicated like an employee. So we've just found it in terms of, you know, the hustle, the dynamism, that's a better way. You mentioned affiliates before, I'd love to know what Coco and Eve's approach is to affiliate marketing right now. Like, is there a formula that you're using?

18:39Is there a platform that you use to run affiliates? How are you approaching that piece of your marketing mix right now? So affiliates are extremely important and growing. It's a new channel that's really booming for us this year. And we did put a lot of time and energy and effort to try to figure it out last year. we use partnerize a narrative it works well with together with your pi agency so you can get in two ways you get pr and then they have links to earn that incremental revenue which most publications are doing vast majority and there's a there's a lot that don't yeah they do seem to want it now it like it seems much more common from you know i used to be a fashion beauty editor and like affiliates i wasn't really getting pr pitches with affiliate links but now it seems to be the And then there's media buyers as well.

19:32So you can put a budget to articles and these can work very well, particularly if your product has some good testimonials and you've got some good results. That's really interesting. I want to talk about like funding the business and bootstrapping. I've read that you, you know, you're still owning a hundred percent of the company, which is incredible, but you also have this amazing distribution. And I feel like most brands that I chat to, when they start working with big retail partners, they start kind of like needing to get that external investment in to be able to fill the orders and like meet that partnership requirement.

20:10How have you been thinking about bootstrapping and funding the business? Because I guess like realistically for a lot of like a lot of folks that we're chatting with in the female founder world community, they are like funding is just not available to them right now. So bootstrapping is a thing that they have to do. So we always love to hear tips from somebody who has like really made it work. It's definitely challenging. And so I feel you through that. And I think that making sure the business model adds up from the beginning. So you see, for example, on direct channel, if you look at the business model, it's actually quite a good business model because you You collect the money and then you send out the goods.

20:54So if you can get the direct channel to work, it's actually a very good business model. We work with influencers with the goal that every content goes viral. So you have to look at, you know, strategies to really get the most out of your influencer dollars. I know paid social is expensive, but the algorithms are coming much better. So you can see that there is, you know, optimizations there. But if you go to Amazon, okay, they pay you a few days later, they take a share, 15%, 20%. But you get the money quite quickly. Retail is a different story because you send in the goods and then they pay you 30 days later.

21:35We found that really focusing on direct first gave us sufficient cash flow to build up our stocks and to build up the other channels. And that's how we're really, you know, bootstrapped the business. Super helpful. Thank you. I heard you mentioned before, and it's been rolling around in my head since you said it, that, you know, you're approaching influencer marketing, wanting that, you know, the goal of every post is for it to go viral. And I want to, I want to dive into that. How is that something that actually action in terms of the way that you're gifting the way that you're engaging influencers the way that you are choosing which ones to put paid spend behind like what does that actually mean and how do you do that so the paid versus gifting you tend to find that paid is stronger at the start and the gifting element it does take a while to to build up unfortunately because influencers gifted so much so you have to sort of really build your brand credibility before people are willing to sort of post with gifting you definitely have a lot more control over the paid channel in terms of creativity than the gifting because you gift and you hope that they post and and you know there's a lot of strategies around that of course but when we look at so we did a launch into alter in february and our budget was 10 ,000.

23:06We looked at, okay, what's happening on TikTok? What videos go viral about someone going in store and discovering a beauty brand? So we looked at, you know, various videos and sort of came up with a brief. You want the brief to have some free creative freedom, but also give an overarching theme. And we looked at Drunk Elephant de Bronzy. It went completely viral. So We were like, what are the videos people are making around that? And it gave us a lot of inspiration. And one of our videos went viral. It's got over 10 million views now. And our launch was just huge. So that was an anomaly. It doesn't happen all the time.

23:47I wish it did. But, you know, you can even with paid, you can be very strategic. We use this mother-daughter duo out of Turkey and their videos get 20 million views. and we just wanted to be playful and creative and they made this, they were making these videos so we sort of briefed them on this creative video they could make together and it was a huge success. In winter we work with Amelia who makes these beautiful ice skating videos and we're like, okay, do your hair before and then show a video of your ice skating. Have fun, make it feel natural and we just look at views every month, how many views and we have a target with views so we're all about just getting that reach through our influencer marketing strategy super interesting I am very curious about whether there still are opportunities for the kind of success that Coco and Eve has seen in the beauty and hair space now I just feel like since I don't know especially since 2020 and TikTok and and it feels like the space has never been so crowded and I wonder whether there is still gaps in the market for people to address and whether you think that there is room for new players to kind of build these kind of meaningful companies if they're starting now.

25:12Yes there is so look at K18 yes That's the after I want. They've got this amazing peptide in their product. They have a patent on it, but it's really interesting. And they've sort of, you know, built this hugely successful brand in a really interesting way. I feel that if you look at their hair care market now, it's really this scientific angle. So that's a huge trend where I see there are so many opportunities. And I think this space where hair care brands are building, you know, outside of the salon, outside of the supermarket, really this middle space, which is huge and growing. So I see opportunities there.

26:00I would just say the only one is skincare. It's getting harder to stand out. Done. But, you know, there's plenty of other space in the beauty industry. So I really see innovation continuing and a lot of creativity. Yeah. Okay. I'd love to hear that. That's the answer I wanted to hear. I was talking with actually like an investor in the space about like what's happening in beauty. And she said that kind of the thing that they were interested in, this is probably a year ago now, was really about folks who came from communities that traditionally hadn't been represented in beauty and they were kind of creating products for those communities and for those very specific demographics.

26:40And I thought that was really interesting because we are seeing a lot of like, there's a really great Latinx hair care brand called Ceremonia, which is doing really well in the US right now. And we're seeing a lot of makeup and skincare that's created for like melanin rich skin that didn't, you know, that didn't exist. It wasn't addressed kind of five or 10 years ago. So I feel like there's space there. But like you said, just skincare and the way that it's been done forever, like, that is a tapped out, a tapped out space. now that's hard. Yeah, that's for sure. Serving minorities. Yeah, it's great.

27:14Great opportunity. Yeah, absolutely. The last question that I ask everyone who comes on the show is just for a resource. And this could be like a book or a podcast or maybe something less tangible, more of a habit or a mindset that's been helping you as you've been building Coco and Eve. And just for people who are, you know, they're coming up behind you, they're trying to build something like what you've built that you think they should check out? Oh, I don't know if you're going to look at me strangely when I say this, but I definitely am a little bit of a David Goggins fan. And look, I just, because it's hard and, and it's so, you know, I'm a mom, I've got this business and sometimes I just like to feel sorry for myself.

27:58Sometimes it's just so hard. And I think those moments which you absolutely deserve but it's really helping me like no like you've got to face the struggle you've got to get through the hard times that's what's helping me at the moment and I love it it gives me inspiration and I know he's pretty full-on kind of guy but no I just those moments get in get the strength up and that's been um that's been helping me I have this amazing business there's so much amazing things going on and that's you know got to bring you forward. I was texting with a girlfriend literally on the weekend and she's at the point now where she wants to, she's looking at maybe her business being acquired.

28:40And she was just like texting and she was like, I feel, I feel like no matter how far along I get, it's never gotten easier. And I always thought that I'd get to a certain point and it would get easier and it just hasn't. Does that resonate with you or, or do you get to the level that Coco and Eve is at right now and does it get easier? So interesting question I met someone quite senior pretty recently a very senior in a you know a listed beauty brand and hearing about their problems like I just like you know we've survived so much you know the world changed in the past three years and you know we couldn't plan we couldn't predict so and the bigger the companies they've had bigger problems to deal with so I think that yes it's true like you kind of feel like that will it ever get better will you know ever not have any wake up and have any problems but the bigger companies have bigger problems so I'm quite happy with my problems But, yeah, I think for me just I love the beauty innovation process.

29:52I love bringing products up to market and getting customers feedback. That's what I live off. So just focus on those and try to solve the problems. Emily, thank you so much for chatting with us, for coming on the show, giving all of your advice, and congratulations on what you've built at Coco & Eve. Where can people find you and where can they find us? So our website is cocoandeve.com. I'm sort of a behind the scenes person, but I'm just coming out and doing some media now. So hopefully there's more stories coming up. Very cool. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you. Quick shout out to all of our business besties subscribers.