Elle Liu’s Turned A Side Hustle Into The Next Big Bedding Brand

0:00Hey everyone, welcome back to the Female Founder World Podcast. is Jasmine. I'm the host of the show and the creator of all things Female Founder World. Today on the show, we have Elle Lu. She's the founder of a business called Eucalypso. They are this beautiful homeware company. And she started this as a side hustle and then built it into a seven-figure e-commerce business with no full-time employees while still working her full-time job within two years. It is now on track to hit eight figures in revenue. And you always hear these stories about brands that just take off. And I don't feel like you really get the opportunity to look under the hood and get into the weeds and understand like, how did, how did you do this?

0:46So Elle really shares the details on how she got all this traction and how she made it happen, how she kind of was able to run such a lean team and still get so much revenue. And if you're enjoying the conversation and you think, I have a question for Elle, or I need some clarification there, or even I would love her to give me some advice about my business. We are doing a group business coaching call with Elle online. So anyone can attend no matter where you are. It's on Tuesday, July 18th, and you can register at the link in the show notes. Okay, let's get into the conversation. You are now entering Female Founder World with your host, Jasmine Garnsworthy.

1:26Elle, welcome to Female Founder World. It's so good to have you on the show. Thank you so much. I am so excited to be here. I love having somebody on the show who's a listener and gets and knows what we're doing. So thank you for being here. Yeah, I've been listening to this podcast for a very long time and I've found it very helpful for my journey. So I'm happy to be here and share my journey. Awesome. So, okay, let's talk about for people who don't know what you're building, what's happening over at Eucalypso Home. Talk us through it. Yeah. So I am the founder of Eucalypso Home. We sell eucalyptus derived bed sheets.

2:01So all of our sheets are made from eucalyptus derived tensile. They're very cooling, soft, eco-friendly, just amazing to sleep in. So if you are a hot sleeper like me, or you have sensitive skin, or you just love good sleep, Eucalypso is designed for that. I am not sleeping very much at the moment because of like this little sleep terror baby that I have. So when I am in bed, it's like a safe haven. I would love to get some of your sheets. Yes, absolutely. I totally feel that. And you know what's so funny? We actually have a lot of moms who, you know, sleep on our sheets. and because of them, we designed crib sheets because they're similar to you.

2:43They're like, I love sleep. I want my little one to have good sleep as well. So yeah, that's something that we came out with in the past year. It's very exciting. Oh, that's really smart. Okay. So let's talk about, I've got some notes here that you built a business that is doing seven figures as a solopreneur in two years. So that's just like a headline there that I think is really interesting and helps capture like where you're at. What are some milestones that you've kind of hit in the business that you think can help people understand? I don't know. It's good to pinpoint where you're at in the founder story.

3:11Yeah, absolutely. So I think some important milestones for us is, like I said, when we hit seven figures in the first two years, I think that was huge for us because it's just like the first kind of big step to, to kind of say that, you know, we're there, we're making something, we're creating something really cool. And then this year, actually, we have our we just signed with Nordstrom so keeping your fingers crossed we're going to be on Nordstrom online and we're moving more into retail and we're actually on track for eight figures this year on our fifth year so I am very excited so lots of big moves oh that's awesome so most of this growth then has been coming through like e-commerce not through retail partnerships so far yeah exactly we are we started as an e-commerce store and we've been pretty much entirely e-commerce so one of my big goals this year is to try to move more into retail brick and mortar and kind of see what the opportunities are there yeah that totally makes sense okay what year did this business start and like what were you know where were you at in your life when you were kind of getting this off the ground yeah so this business start I started the business at the end of 2018 I was working a full-time corporate job as a product manager in New York City and so like in FinTech?

4:27Yeah, exactly. So I was working at American Express, so kind of FinTech, actually working with small businesses. And that was kind of part of the inspiration where I was talking to a lot of small business owners and I was really impressed by what they were doing. And I was like, I kind of want to start something too. And so I started the business, you know, as kind of a side gig, I will have my nine to five. And after work, I would work on Lipsow. And I did that for probably three and a half years before I did full time. So that's kind of where I was. I started from. Okay. And what was the inflection point that made you think, okay, now's the time to like go full time into the business?

5:08Yeah. So for me, I know a lot of people answer this and say when it kind of matched their salary for their kind of take home revenue. But for me, honestly, I am kind of very risk averse. And so it took me a very long time. So for me, it was kind of when we hit that seven figure mark and I really felt like, OK, I have enough build for me to feel comfortable, you know, leaving my full time job as well as a little bit extra, because I think what a lot of people don't factor is that you have a lot of costs and a lot of instability, even when you're making the amount that you were making in your full time job.

5:44Right. So there's health care and there's all of these other things. And so for me, I think it was partly, you know, when that salary matched up, but also mentally when I was kind of ready to take that step, which is a huge step. So, yeah, that was a decision there. It is a huge step. And like everyone does answer that question really, really differently. Like some people are just like, I was doing this thing. I was going to like live off savings and like have another hustle on the side if I needed to. I did not want to be in that job anymore. And then other people are way more risk adverse, kind of like you, where they needed to have, you know, that like serious revenue coming through.

6:20But I don't think I know anyone who hit, waited till I hit seven figures. How were you running? How were you running a business that was turning over that much volume and working full time? That's wild. Yeah, I think in the early days of e-com, it was very lucky because I'm sure you heard this all the time. This is when ads were working really well. And luckily, I was able to automate a lot of things. So I think the most difficult and time consuming things is setting things up so that they were working for you. Right. So creating those accounts, setting up those ads, figuring out even how to run an ad.

6:52But once you got it working, I found it to be actually pretty easy because you can have it pretty streamlined. So after work, I log into Google ads or Facebook and I check and make sure things are working. And it was a lot easier to be able to do something like that and to have it running automatically. practically rather I think these days it's a lot more hands-on you need to always be refreshing creative so things like that yeah so I think it was also partly luck with timing and just making sure that I have all of the basics fundamentals set up how do you teach yourself how to run ads like paid ads it's something that I've like dabbled in and just have not nailed and I find it really tedious and frustrating and I'm often like in there kind of like doing the thing and then I'm like, oh, fuck this, I'm out.

7:38This is way too hard. Where do you go to like teach yourself this kind of thing? Yeah. So I think for me that really came to my background as a product manager, because luckily in my line of work, I was able to work with a lot of different people in different fields. So I worked very closely with marketing to set up ads. And that's kind of where I learned, you know, how Facebook ads work, how Google ads work, how do you read KPIs and all of those things. and I was also, for instance, working with a lot of UI UX designers. So that really helped me be able to design the website. And I was working with developers.

8:12And so I knew a lot of kind of front end stuff like that. And so it was very helpful to, for me, come from a background where I dabbled in a lot of these different tech areas because it helped provide a fundamental knowledge of doing things like that. And then I think from there, it was just kind of playing around, watching a lot of YouTube videos. I'm pretty sure that's like, that's the secret to entrepreneurship is just a lot of YouTube videos. And I think those really helped me set up, you know, those marketing ads and all of those things. Yeah. No, the, uh, YouTube university is, is the place.

8:48It definitely is super helpful. I've learned a lot just through watching like free content online as well. I can't, I'm still like trying to wrap my head around the fact that you built like a seven figure side hustle that is wild to me were you using a like third-party fulfillment center how did you handle that logistics piece because that's like pretty time consuming so my logistics was essentially my parents my family I actually gotta rip them in I know they are amazing they are so good they like just they they know how to pack boxes like in two seconds it's it's so great no but they were very very supportive from the beginning and so they really helped me with that fulfillment piece which I have to say really took a huge load off of my hand because the first year I was essentially fulfilling out of my New York City apartment which I'm sure you know as well you have no space it's so hard I was actually a lot of times just taking the subway and dropping packages off if they were in New York so it's a lot of work I've done that too I've done that too it's funny I'm gonna save myself the eight dollars and absolutely right yeah exactly but the other day I was actually looking back at my Instagram stories from when I just started and it was like me just carrying all these boxes around New York but it's quite funny yeah no so my parents have been really helpful with that and then once it got to a point where it was too big for their garage I finally moved it to a warehouse but they've been super super great and so that's something that I see a lot of entrepreneurs do.

10:17And I think that's something I would highly suggest is to just start with, you know, your family and your kind of garage or basement you can find, because I think that's a really great way to kind of start from something. 100%. So it's fulfillment now managed. I'm like getting in the weeds a bit here, but I am curious. A lot of people ask questions about this in the female founder world, like online community home. Are you, did you launch your own warehouse and handle fulfillment yourself? or did you just like find a third party logistics and like go with them? Yeah, I'm really glad we're talking about this because this is something I spent the past year and a half just trying to figure out.

10:51So I started my own warehouse. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of trade-offs here specifically for my product. So we're talking bedding, right? So you have bed sheets and it's extremely heavy and bulky. So just so that you understand our usual sheets, they go anywhere from five to 10 pounds, which is quite heavy. and so 3PLs were really difficult for us because I think they're actually really great for people who have really small items right so if you're selling eyeliner or something really tiny it's really easy to store because you're essentially paying for the storage space as well as the service they're providing but for us because our products are so huge we would have to take up an enormous amount of space and it was just really expensive for us to ship and also the other thing that I will say that what's a huge part of the consideration is I talked to a lot of other entrepreneurs who use 3PLs.

11:43And the thing with 3PLs is that they are very prone to making mistakes. And when you have really expensive goods like sheets that's heavy to ship, that's, you know, at a higher price point, if they accidentally ship out five or 10 of a sheet set when someone, when the customer just ordered one, that is a huge cost to us on a lot of different fronts. And I've heard nightmare stories like that. And so that was something that I didn't really want to take a chance on. I just felt like it made more sense to have my own space, have control of the space and my workers and what that fulfillment looks like.

12:19That's no joke, though, like creating your own warehouse. That's its whole like own logistical learning curve. You know, it totally makes sense that that's, you know, the thinking behind why you made that decision. but how did you actually learn how to create a warehouse and hire a logistics team and organize the way like how do you do that yeah I'm going to be quite frank I am actually still figuring it out as I go yeah yeah but I actually ended up talking to a lot of people who are in supply chain which I have to admit is the biggest struggle as someone who's kind of more on the creative side supply chain I have no background in it no understanding but it really helped to talk to people who know what they're doing because at the end of the day it's something that has its own process that a lot of people have done and have processes for and so you kind of just have to copy that and for me it was just really scaling it down so I talked to so I'm currently based in Portland and obviously we have Adidas and Nike and all of these big companies there and I know people who work there so it's just talking to them and getting a understanding of what systems they use, how do they set up their shelves and their racks and kind of how do you get the right workers and learning from them and just kind of really scaling that down.

13:34So for instance, we don't use a lot of the technology that they use to, you know, tag different items and to ship it out. But we do, for instance, make sure that I have a scanner that we use to make sure that when we have incoming equipments that, you know, or supplies that we are tagging them and that we have a process in place for everything but it is kind of you know homegrown so for instance I don't have a team to receive packages because we only receive them once every quarter so so I will task wrap it and now I actually have a group of people I know who are really great at lifting packages who we always work with so it's kind of a combination of actual systems and also a lot of homegrown solutions I want to do a workshop I think and guys listening if this is interesting to you just send us, send me a DM on the female founder world account and let me know.

14:23But I think that it would be helpful just to do a workshop around how you create your own warehouse, because this is, this is a thing that people are like weighing up, but it is not something, you know, you said like YouTube, this is not the kind of thing that you can Google very easily. So I think it would make a really good workshop. I actually completely agree with that. And I will say I YouTube how to set up a warehouse and there was no videos on it. It was just a bunch of people touring warehouses. I'm like, Oh, that looks really nice. And next thing, you know, they have a complete setup.

14:49I'm like, how did that happen? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, totally. That's a real great area that I think a workshop would help. Okay. So in the early days you were running a lot of ads and that kind of helped you grow. And then now, you know, you're a couple of years in, I'm sure that ads helped you get to the point where you have a lot of, you know, you have a lot of repeat customers that you were able to like acquire in those early days and get enough, like get to the inflection point with their referring people and that kind of thing through the ads. But I am interested in where you're finding new customers now that maybe ads is a little bit more of a complicated channel.

15:23Are you still like doubling down on that as your strategy? Is there something else that's working? Like what recommendations do you have for people? Yeah. So when I started, like you said, it was probably a hundred percent all ads, a combination of Facebook and Google and Pinterest and all of those things that really worked well. But ever since, you know, the new iOS update, we've really had to diversify our channels. And so these days we are doing a lot of influencer marketing, which I know that a lot of other people are doing as well. And we've been seeing a lot of success there. And I will say tied with that, a piece that's tied in combination with that is affiliate marketing as well.

16:04And so it's not just having your influencers get their words out there, right? It's also making sure that they kind of get the benefit of, you know, those conversions. And for us, affiliate marketing has been really helpful because it's not just influencers, but it's also bloggers, it's people who run coupon websites, it's people who make YouTube videos, things like that. It really spans all of the different areas. And we found that to be a really great way to drive more new incoming traffic because, you know, you get a piece, they get a piece. is overall beneficial. Okay, awesome. What platform are you using for the affiliates?

16:44Is there something that you recommend? Yeah, so we use ShareSale. I know there's a lot, a few other ones as well. ShareSale is kind of like the OG affiliate marketing. I will say their UI is not the best. So it's a little bit difficult to get started. But once you are on it, it's a really great way to kind of, you know, that's where everyone is. And it's a great way to find people who are in the market for the affiliate space. The one thing that from experience, I will warn about affiliate marketing is to really watch out for coupon and deal sites because I would say in general, in terms of people or businesses that will reach out to you about affiliate marketing, the majority of them are coupons and deals.

17:27And it's just a matter of if that's kind of something you want associated with your brand, looking at your margins, things like that. Because at the end of the day, the thing that's going to drive more, you know, I think really healthy, really, really robust customers are kind of not the coupon sites, right? It's the blogs and the influencers and the YouTubers and things like that. But that's something that I will just note about the affiliate space. When you're finding influencers, bloggers, content creators to work with, is there any kind of like formula, any kind of person, size of following something that you found, or like even a specific person that you found that just like converts really well?

18:11Something that in general we found is just, and I'm sure this goes without saying is quality of their work. And that's the same, whether it's an influencer or a blogger, I think for us is them putting out really high quality, you know, what either articles or images or things like that. And, you know, being easy to work with. So we've actually had, we've seen the most success from people who, you know, are really receptive to our products or really enthused about it, who will keep up the communication and who will produce really high quality work. And for us that really ranges, you know, whether you have so for for instagram for instance we've had people who have like 1000 followers who create beautiful work and they actually drive a lot of conversions compared to people who you know have 200k followers and they just put kind of just the random photo up and that's it and it drives no conversion so it's really hard to pinpoint but i think obviously you're on instagram you understand how it is, it's just having an eye for knowing kind of what to look out for and what high quality work means.

19:22I'm really interested in like what, you know, this affiliate partnership thing is super interesting to me and we haven't really delved into it a lot on the show before. Is there like a certain number of people that you think folks should be working with to be able to like really get traction? Like what's the sweet spot there in terms of volume? yeah I would say that's kind of that's an interesting question because I don't know if I would look at it in terms of volume because you have affiliate really ranges from you know you can have Forbes as one of your affiliate right and that just that one affiliate can drive a million page views or something versus you might have a small influencer who makes you know a post and it drives like five people.

20:06And so I would say that a lot of what we look at is kind of page views and conversion. And that can really range from, you know, five affiliates to 200 affiliates to anything like that. And so I would say that something important to look at is just kind of what that conversion number looks like and what a good number of page views is. And so for instance, right now I would say our affiliates drive probably anywhere between 10 to 15 percent of our site visitors which is a pretty healthy amount for us I think yeah and you know that conversion number just really depends on who it is we've seen for instance that a lot of small influencers as well as a lot of publishers actually do really well with conversions whereas a lot of you know sometimes you just kind of get a lot of different other people like bloggers, YouTubers who might not drive as much conversion.

20:59So it just kind of really depends on the mix. I have heard from, like, I still, I used to be an editor and I still get a lot of pitches from publicists and stuff, even though I, you know, I'm like only creating content for female fans now. But I do see people saying a lot like, oh, we're on share a sale. We're on show. Like that seems to be the thing that a lot of publishers are interested in hearing about. So there must be a lot of like, there's a reason why brands are getting on there. I think a lot of those top tier publications are using that platform. Even if the UX isn't amazing, it sounds like the right platforms are on there.

21:33Yeah, and I want to actually add to that. That's something that I've seen as well is that in the past few years, publishers, they will share your product and they really get nothing out of it. But these days, that's actually a huge way that they're making revenues, that they share, they make a listicle, Well, exactly. And so affiliate space is really growing a lot. Yeah, I agree. We should do a workshop on that too. This is like giving me lots of ideas. Okay. You sound like someone who is very into the automations and that you've got your systems like really in check and you've been able to scale this company with a really, really lean team.

22:07Are there any like tools, tech, anything that you're using that helps with automations, whether it's literally like Shopify apps, I don't know if you're on Shopify, but like e-commerce apps or things that you're using for your own productivity, stuff that's kind of like helping you get all of this stuff done. Yeah. I love what you mentioned. We are on Shopify and I lean heavily into the Shopify apps. I think they're really amazing and they've been super, super helpful. And so I would say it's a combination of using these apps and also hiring for the right people. Right. And so for instance, on social media, we've been doing a lot of influencer campaigns, things like that.

22:44We use the Collabs app, which allows influencers to find us and apply through our application to be part of our team. And so I have a social media manager who runs that aspect, but having Collabs is super helpful to make her work easier. We use Ria Mays for our customer service. And so it's just kind of like any of the other platforms, we just found it to be super easy to use. So I have a customer service team, but through that, I can see all the tickets, they can escalate things up to me or, you know, anyone else. And so that's been super helpful. And then we also use, I know recently in the past year, Shopify rolled out their own automation tools where you can kind of filter for people.

23:26If, you know, if something comes in as fraudulent, it will immediately cancel it, things like that. And so we built a whole setup there. That's been really helpful for us for order fulfillment, for fraud filter, as well as for, you know, contacting people again, if they are a lapsed user or anything like that. Amazing. Okay. So many good recommendations there. And then the last thing that I ask everyone who comes on the show is for a recommendation. And you've given us some like really specific stuff around automations, apps, that kind of thing, which very, very helpful. But is there a book, a habit that you have just like something that's been helping you as you've been up leveling as this entrepreneur and as a leader?

24:05Yeah, so I, everyone who knows me knows this is like my favorite book. I love this book called The Originals by Adam Grant. It actually was the book that really inspired my entrepreneurship route. And basically the gist of it is that there's all of these original thinkers out there who create incredible things, entrepreneurs being a type of original. And the way that we, I previously always thought of entrepreneurs is that they're risk risk takers. They quit their job to do everything. They're all in. They, you know, are just these incredible superheroes. And for me, like I told you, I'm very risk averse.

24:38That's not me at all. I don't think I could ever be like that. And Adam Grant actually found a lot of data that proves that, you know, the most successful entrepreneurs or originals are not like that. They're not the people that immediately quit their job. If you look at Warby Parker, you know, they were, they didn't all quit their job and immediately start doing this thing. They have some traction and then they slowly ease into it. And so it really helped me shift my mindset into from, hey, I don't think I'm risky enough to build something that's huge. And that's great. I'm not that kind of person to being like, hey, I have an idea.

25:12And I think I can still do it. You know, I think I'm hardworking, I'm smart, and I think I can take it step by step. So if you are, you know, someone who are exploring entrepreneurship, or just thinking about it, or maybe you are just not that really ballsy person who always thought of yourself as someone who could be a self-starter, I would highly recommend the book because I think it's really helpful to kind of, you know, ease your way in and understand that you can, you can start it too. Okay. That is such good advice. I've heard that recommendation before. I haven't read the book, but you've just sold me on it.

25:44Elle, thank you so much for coming on Female Founder World. It's been amazing to have you on the show and congratulations on the success. Like I'm applauding. I just think it's incredible that what you've been able to build on such a lean team. Thank you so much, Asuna. I really appreciate it. And thanks for having me. Quick shout out to all of our business bestie subscribers. If you are loving this show and you are building a consumer CPG or e-commerce business, or you're about to build one, this membership will give you access to the people experiences and the tools that you really need to build your dream business.

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