Madi Stefanis Started Selling Film Cameras to Gen Z—Within 18 Months She Made $3.6 Million

0:00Hey business besties, welcome back to the female founder world podcast is Jasmine. I'm the host of the show and I am the creator behind the female founder world universe. we are back on the pod for 2024 and yes I know it has been a bit of a break I I got your dms I got the message we had a pretty big like end the year with summer and so the team and I wanted to take a bit of time off plus we have been doing our Australia tour we have events in Melbourne Sydney Brisbane Sydney Brisbane are happening this week and then we're back to New York and we are back in regular programming. But I wanted to kick off with someone who has a really interesting story, has a different perspective, who is in the weeds right now with the business and really has figured out a way to build momentum.

0:55Her name is Maddie Stephanas. She's the founder of a business called 35 Millimeter Co. Maybe you've seen them on TikTok. That's where I found them. She's Australian like me I interviewed her while I was here in Australia visiting for our Australia tour and she started this business well she started dabbling in this space when she was 19 and then just a couple of years ago when she was 21 years old she created a film camera for Gen Z and it was called The Reloader she made 3.6 million Australian dollars in 18 months she sold 40 ,000 units She went on Shark Tank. Like, obviously this is not the normal founder story, particularly for business that is fully bootstrapped.

1:36And I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to figure out what it is that she's tapped into that is just driving so much growth. Plus she's someone who describes herself as being shy and quite introverted. And yet she still shows up fairly publicly for the brand. I mean, she went on Shark Tank in Australia. And so I wanted to talk about that and how she kind of overcame that to be forward-facing in her business and what role that has played in her success as well. But before we get into today's conversation, I do have a very quick resource recommendation for you. It is Female Founder World's very first course.

2:18I know that you have probably come to our free workshop series our group coaching calls downloaded our free pdfs we do so much free programming so that when we ask for a paid program or we ask people to pay for a program you know that it's going to be amazing this is called retail boot camp and it is teaching the systems that small businesses are using to hit really big revenue goals by scaling through independent retail stockists. And basically I had just asked all of these bootstrap business owners, what helped them hit that first million dollars in revenue. And it wasn't just, oh, we got into Target, we got into Sephora.

3:03They didn't spend heaps of money on digital ads. They weren't necessarily relying on going viral on social media, but instead they built the business brick by brick through this wholesale strategy. And that is really good news because it's something that you can repeat like it's a framework that you can copy and paste and learn from there are templates and tools that you can use to be able to replicate that kind of success in your own business without needing to raise millions from investors right now or yes you can still keep working towards that big Sephora or Target or CVS stockist but let's get some wins on the board right now, figure out how your business works in wholesale with a lot of smaller indie stockists.

3:47And it works. It's how you can hit those bigger revenue milestones right now. We have a hundred spots in the course. More than half of them are already gone. So I'm going to pop a link in the show notes. This is the first time I've spoken about it in on the podcast. And if you do want to grab a spot, I really do recommend that you go and do that now because we 100 % will hit capacity on this one. Okay, let's get into the show and start talking to Maddie. You are now entering Female Founder World with your host, Jasmine Gronsworthy. Maddie, welcome to Female Founder World. It's so good to have you on the show.

4:23It's so nice to finally be here. I'm excited we've made time to sit down and record this. We spoke quite recently at Female Founder World's Melbourne pop-up party. So I feel like I got a good test run and really was able to dive into your story, which I feel like will make this conversation even better. For people that don't know 35mm Co, what are you building? What am I building? I am building a, so 35mm Co sells reusable film cameras. So essentially we're a brand that, yes, we sell a camera, but essentially we're selling an experience. There is something so nostalgic and so fun about dropping off your film at a processing lab, not remembering what's on the roll, and then receiving those photos in your inbox a couple of days later.

5:09Talk me through how the business started because you guys are only officially a couple of years old, but you were testing it for a little while before you launched. And you've got a really interesting story about how you figured out that there was a market here. Talk me through those early days. You're 19 when you start testing out this idea. What happened? Of course. So we've had a few iterations. You're completely right. I was 19 at the time. I had a vintage film camera sitting at home. I don't have a background in photography and I decided to list that vintage film camera for sale on Facebook marketplace.

5:41So I listed the camera for$50. People started bidding in the comments and the camera sold for$250. So naturally I've always been a little bit business minded. And I think that was a very clear early indication that perhaps this niche had some potential. So I took the money from that sale. I reinvested it into buying more vintage cameras and I started flipping them. This was over a couple of years. So I essentially was flipping vintage cameras. I had sourced a number of really reputable photographers all over the world who would scout flea markets, test vintage cameras, refurbish them, and then send them to me.

6:19I would then on sell them to the Australian market. And so I hit a couple of pain points in terms of selling vintage cameras one being that they're vintage they're in limited supply the second being that due to them being vintage the price was high the vintage cameras were quite scarce and so the cost of acquiring them was quite high for myself let alone on selling them to the customer the third was that vintage cameras can be quite tricky to use and because no two cameras are the same there was quite a long customer education process required for that product. So essentially after months of buying and selling vintage cameras, they were consistently selling out each drop we would release.

6:58I came to the conclusion that I wanted to create this camera of my own that essentially addressed all of the pain points I was experiencing with the vintage cameras. Okay. So how does somebody go about and make a camera? You're, you know, you said before you're business minded, but you're 19. It's not like you've started multiple businesses and you have all of these connections and supply chains. Like what were those steps that you did to get it started? It was really tricky, especially not coming from a photography background. Manufacturing a camera just seemed like this huge mountain that I had to cross.

7:28I started off, I hopped straight on Google. I looked up camera manufacturers. Funnily enough, there are actually very few camera manufacturers in the world. The major ones kind of reside in Japan and China. So I actually had a friend who was a sourcing agent, had a long history in buying. And so she had a couple of connections overseas who would essentially go and look at all of the factories and vet all of the camera suppliers around the world. So we basically did sort of like an audit. So we had all of these camera manufacturers reviewed. We received samples from all of them. We spoke to all of them.

8:05And essentially I landed on this one factory who was a family business. They've been around since the 1950s and film photography is their life. They very much rode the wave through black and white film. They watched film photography die off. And then essentially they watched it boom around 2019. So they have been in the industry for such a long time. And what they did was they presented us with a whole lot of ideas, a number of different camera models. And essentially they provided us with a base to a camera. And then we were allowed to build on that and add certain features and tweak certain parts.

8:39So this entire process took about 12 months. It was definitely super daunting. And I'm really lucky that I had a sourcing agent to help me who spoke the native language and could help us actually communicate with the manufacturer. That's a really good takeaway there about the sourcing agent and how there are all these people, like people within the ecosystem who can help you do this stuff. Like when you're finding stockists, there are buyers agents, like there are these middlemen that can help you if you've got this really complicated industry that you're trying to break into. So I feel like that can be a really good step for people.

9:12I'm curious about how you're funding this. Was this coming from money that you'd kind of like stashed away through selling the vintage cameras, reselling them on the website? Yes. So I didn't pull any money from the vintage cameras. I was just letting that cashflow build up in the bank account. Our first stock shipment of the reload of the camera we sell now, I actually invested $50 ,000 of my own money. So I worked at the supermarket from the age of 15 to 19. I've always been a good saver. And so I essentially saved every cent and decided to risk it all on this business idea. Oh my God. I love this.

9:45Good for you. Okay. So then you've got your, your first product that you guys have invented and created. How did you launch it? Because when I looked at your story and realized that that had only been around for like a couple of years, I was pretty shocked because I feel like I've, I've seen you everywhere. The, uh, the team at Female Founder World, especially like the Gen Z folks on the team, having like you have to get Maddie on the show like her brand is so cool how did you have that launch that created so much buzz and now makes you look huge so 35 millimeter co essentially started off as the Instagram account that I first created was almost like this idealistic it looked like a Pinterest board it was almost like this Instagram page full of film photos from Pinterest or other photographers it was like a bit a bit of an artwork it almost looked like this beautiful picture perfect Instagram and so as I was selling the vintage cameras I was very much creating that ideal feed and this is what your photos can look like and so I think that why 35mm Co launched so well when we moved into our second iteration when we launched the reloader is that I completely flipped the feed so in the background we worked on new branding we changed our logo, we changed our brand colors, we did a photo shoot and seven days before the Reloader launched, we completely flipped everything.

11:10So all of a sudden this super grungy vintage looking feed became very pink and very much a brand rather than just a Pinterest mood board. So I think that that in itself created a lot of buzz because people were so curious as to what was happening and why we had so suddenly flipped our branding, told everyone that vintage cameras once sold out weren't being restocked. Interesting. When I look at, listen to that story, I'm like, oh, that's a really clever approach. Did you have, did you take any courses? Did you go to business school? Did you study marketing? Like, or was this just an intuitive thing that you're kind of figuring out as you were going?

11:42Look, it was pretty intuitive. I was at uni at the time. I can't say that I was a very good student. I never attended lectures or classes. You were busy. Yeah. I would just do my assignments and hope that I would pass. But I was studying, I was doing a double degree in marketing and entrepreneurship at the time. Okay, cool. Okay, so you're like, you are trained as well, but do you think that you learn more on the job or that you learn more at school? Oh, definitely on the job. I actually didn't finish my degree. I just found that I was learning so much from the business and trial and error and testing new things online that it was far more valuable for me.

12:14Okay, so I've got a couple of stats here, which I'm pretty blown away at. One is that you sold 40 ,000 cameras in 18 months and you did 3.6 million in revenue in that 18 months as well. How were you doing that? like what was driving most of those sales? Solely direct to consumer, those sales, we didn't have any retailers at the time. And TikTok was the biggest contributor to that revenue. In the days leading up to the Reloader launch, we went hard on TikTok. We were posting multiple times a day. I think we were lucky that at that time, product-based videos were going really viral on TikTok. We launched in the middle of lockdown.

12:52And I think that an element of luck was definitely at play in the sense that the world's eyes are on their phones. TikTok was very new, very up and coming and product-based videos were performing incredibly well. People were really curious about film cameras at the time and I think there was definitely a noticeable boom in the rise of film photography and so popping these products on people's feeds they were so intrigued as to what they were and how they worked that our videos just went consistently viral and And I think that we grew a really strong organic TikTok following, which then again translated, which also translated into our Instagram followers too.

13:29You're saying we a lot. I noticed on your TikTok that it's not like just you that's on the feed. Did you have someone else creating content for you? Or like, how did you think about that? Was it in the first early days, was it just you? It was just me. Isn't it funny how we say we as business owners, it was always just me. I think that 35 has just always felt so much bigger than only myself. A hundred percent. And also like, I feel like there's something there that's a bit of an imposter syndrome as well, where it's like, well, I couldn't have done this all by myself. Do you know what I mean? Even though in the early days you really did, you did do this.

14:00It is you, it is an I. But I think we say we as like a protection mechanism to kind of like, to broaden out the responsibility and also the credit, I think as well. Okay. So now you are, you're still blowing up on TikTok all the time. You have your own account where you're pretty like forward facing. Talk me through your approach to that. What's working now that the landscape has shifted a bit? Is like TikTok shop working for you guys? Do you have a content team? What's the layout there? I'll split it up into the 35 account and my personal TikTok account in terms of TikTok shop. We're actually not on TikTok shop yet.

14:40So we're only just forming as an LLC in the US. So we're hoping to launch onto US TikTok shop in the coming months. I believe that TikTok shop is coming to Australia around mid-year as well. So that should be really interesting to see how it performs. I think you'll do really well. I think so too. I think my only thing about TikTok shop is that we sit at a 99 RRP and I don't know that it's quite an impulse purchase, but I think that it'll be really interesting to see how the product performs. okay cool um and so who is creating content in your team now so in-house we have liliana who's our content creator she essentially stands as the face of the 35 millimeter code tiktok and she's been doing that for probably about a year and a half now so she's very much the face of the brand people go up to her in the street and ask if she's the 35 millimeter code girl i really wanted to have someone who was essentially an embodiment of our customer i think that lil fits in really well as our ideal 35 millimeter co-girl or how we envision our customers to be.

15:42And so there's that element of relatability, having her as the face of the brand. That's so interesting, that role of like shifting it off you as the founder, even though like, you know, you are, you fit the demographic of your customer, your Gen Z, like it would make sense for you to be forward-facing. Why did you make the decision not to do that on the brand account? I'm naturally super introverted. And I think it was just as simple as the fact that I didn't like posting about myself online. I didn't love public speaking. That is something that has not come naturally to me. It's very much been chipped away at and worked on over time.

16:16So I never wanted to be the face of the brand myself. That's really interesting. Okay, cool. And then how do you like approach your own TikTok? You're talking about the business, but you're also doing vlogs. Does that lead to sales? How do you think about that? I think that it probably works probably more from a personal brand point of view for me personally. It definitely helps connect with other female founders, other business owners, which I think has been so incredibly valuable because I don't come from a family with a business background. I really felt the brunt of, I guess, like loneliness that comes with entrepreneurship at the very beginning.

16:51I felt like I didn't have anyone to turn to for help. Whereas now I feel like I have a really strong network around me of people I can call if something goes wrong or if I need a quick little piece of advice. I think that that's been extremely beneficial from a brand awareness point of view. Yes, it's definitely helped. And people now know me as the founder of the brand, but I don't think that I necessarily need to be front facing on the brand account. I do like keeping them a little bit separate. How often are you guys posting at the moment? Once a day. Okay. Okay. I really need to step it up.

17:23Interesting. The other thing I want to talk about. So that's driving a lot of your sales for the website, kind of that like content, organic content approach. But I want to chat about wholesale and retail and what role that plays in the business. Is that something that you're thinking about? Is that contributing to that revenue at the moment? How do you think about that? Absolutely. Wholesale is probably contributing to about 30, 35 % of our revenue at the moment. It has been such an incredibly good way to reach new audiences and new customers. I think the thing with our product is that it's such a good gift.

17:58So particularly around Christmas time in Q4, the camera performs really well in retail. We're currently stocked in, for your Australian listeners, Universal Store, The Iconic and Culture Kings. And for the US, we're in Revolve, Free People and Urban Outfitters. So as you can imagine, being an Australian company, having access to those major US retailers, customers and website the brand awareness is just invaluable it has been such a great way to reach new customers and it really has increased our revenue I find that we push a lot more volume through wholesale which is amazing. Okay so how did those partnerships come about like let's say you're someone who has a brand that's doing well maybe you're D2C, Ecom and you're ready to take that step into retail.

18:48What worked for you and what do you think people should try and do? A couple of them, to be completely honest, landed in my inbox, which is great. I think that if you have a strong brand and a strong brand identity, then inevitably retail buyers will slowly start to come after you. And it always happens at a time where you're not quite ready. So I think that lots of founders have experienced the mad rush to scramble and get your products ready for retail. I think one way you can really set yourself up well is by doing the basics, having your SKU listed on your product, having barcodes, all of those really simple things that I didn't think to do in the beginning and were a huge barrier to us entering wholesale.

19:25I think that if you're going into wholesale, you need to be super hyper aware of your margins, your unit metrics, and whether it's actually a sustainable way for you to maintain a good profit margin on selling your products to other retailers. We actually have this retail course that we're currently in pre-enrollment for. And I think this is something that people don't realize. It's like if you don't have the SKU and the barcode on your products, sometimes you have to redo your product packaging for wholesale. What are some of those other things that are kind of like on the checklist that you need to have set up?

19:58You also talked about margins and your unit economics. Like specifically, what should that be looking like? in terms of unit economics and margins I think it is completely dependent on your brand and what your net profit needs to be for you to actually operate a sustainable business but when it comes to product packaging a major red flag for us and a mistake I made is that our camera box doesn't have a photo of the product on it so we have product packaging that it has this beautiful gradient on it it says the brand name it says that it's a camera but there is actually no image So if it's sitting on a retail shelf, customers can't open it and look at the product.

20:34So what we've recently had to implement for a retailer we're launching into is we've needed to actually put a vector image of the camera on the front of the box. Otherwise, we have to go back to the drawing board and figure out, do we want to do clear packaging? Is there a way that customers can actually see the product hanging on a retail shelf? Because our brand awareness alone isn't enough to carry customers knowing what's inside that box. It's so true. It's such a different experience shopping when you've got a whole website page and all of the storytelling that happens there, all of the imagery, maybe you have UGC on the product page as well, versus if you are discovering something in a store on a shelf and you just see a box.

21:14Like, how do you tell your whole brand story that was on that product page on that box? Absolutely. I think it is something that you really do need to visually communicate well, especially as a first touch point. If someone's in a retail store and they've seen your product for the very first time, look, they may not pick it up and buy it. But at least having that brand recognition and then maybe they'll see it in their Instagram feed. Maybe they'll see it on an ad. I think that's a really good first touch point and introduction to the customer. So you're someone who has this one kind of hero product that you're known for, the camera.

21:48It's called the Reloader. How do you think about adding new products to a company like that? This is such an important category for us and something that I didn't do very well at the beginning. I think that the Reloader launched with so much hype, but it performed really well. And I very much pushed to the wayside, new product development and launching new SKUs. I think that you need to understand that companies need to be well-rounded. You can't rely on a single product particularly if it's a trending product and I'm very lucky that film photography doesn't really feel like a trend I think it's very much will stand the test of time and the data proves that but I think that you need to almost safeguard yourself with other product lines particularly because we don't have a high repurchase rate we sell a product that is reusable it solves the problem with single use so not having a high repurchase rate is something that you actually need to factor into your business model and how you're going to create recurring revenue with customers.

22:48So we're currently looking at, we've just released photo albums and the concept behind the photo albums was to be able to cater to the 40 ,000 existing customers who have all purchased a camera, but don't have anywhere to put their photos. So I think that looking at complimentary products like that is really important to assist and almost cushion your core product line in any business. So then how do you go about launching a new product like that? Are you, is it through email? Like, how do you how do you communicate? Like, hey, hey, team, we have something new for you to buy now. We did do a lot of email marketing.

23:20We actually heavily relied on TikTok for the photo album because visually it is so striking. We found that the photo album videos often went viral on TikTok when paired with a really nostalgic audio. So I think that TikTok was such a key player. But as we continue to release new photo album designs, we've had lots of requests for new colorways, new artworks. it actually doubles as a coffee table book. So we're very much pushing a little bit into the interior design, home and lifestyle segment as well. I think that we will rely on that email list building and particularly not necessarily a scarcity model, but we've had a lot of demand for the photo album in the US and it's actually still not available in the US.

24:01Our stock's landing in a couple of weeks. So I think that we will very much take that momentum and do what we can with it. But how do you prepare to launch in another country? Are you finding a like a local fulfillment distribution center? Do you have like team members on the ground? Is it a logistical headache? It's a little bit of a logistical headache, but I think that you can do it quite well. It honestly depends on your product. I think for us, we're lucky that no part of our product is an aerosol or flammable. It is quite literally just a camera. We don't have any battery issues. So shipping internationally, we are completely fine.

24:36We have a US 3PL in Utah. So our stock gets shipped from China directly to the US warehouse and from China directly to the Melbourne warehouse in Australia. So we split up our stock shipments. US customers receive their orders directly from the US. And it's definitely helped in terms of expediting shipping. I think that it gets to a stage where as your volumes continue to increase, you can't continue shipping from Australia to other parts of the world. So essentially that was our biggest pain point. And in terms of launching into US retailers, you really do need a way to get stock over to them quickly.

25:11A hundred percent. Let's talk about Shark Tank now, because this came along in 2023 and I'd heard about you, but I think like once Shark Tank happened, you kind of blew up on my feed and in my kind of world. I'd love to know how that opportunity came about. You're on Shark Tank Australia. How did they hear about you? How did you pitch for the show? and then talk me through what like the preparation process is for going on a show like that. Of course, I actually saw a LinkedIn post from Jane Liu, who's one of the sharks on Shark Tank. So Shark Tank Australia has had a five year hiatus. It hasn't been on screens for the last five years and they decided to bring it back in 2023.

25:52So they opened casting, they're accepting applications and I just thought I grew up watching Shark Tank. Some of the female founders that I follow now were on Shark Tank back when I was a teenager. So I just thought, you know what, I'm just going to apply. I had heard that there was something like 10 ,000 applicants, that it was really slim chances of even getting a response or a call back. They were only contacting successful prospective applicants. So I submitted an application. I kind of just put my laptop to the side and thought, look, I'll probably never receive anything back, but at least I've done it.