Sephora Accepted This Beauty Brand Before They Launched

0:00Hey, business besties. Welcome back to the Female Founder World Podcast. I'm Jasmine. I'm the host of the show and the creator behind the Female Founder World universe. Today, I'm chatting with another Aussie in New York, Maeva from Bread Beauty. Maeva, welcome to the show. You are now entering Female Founder World with your host, Jasmine Grinsworthy. Thanks for having me. For people that don't know Bread, what are you guys doing? So we make hair care products. We like to say we make hair care basics for not so basic hair. um so it's hair care that's predominantly for coily curly and textured hair and you left your job you're at L 'Oreal right you're in the beauty industry and you left your job to start something kind of before you had anything right and um a lot of the time we talk to folks on the show who maybe quit their job a couple years in or they're doing consulting like what was your timeline through to idea to having a physical product yeah I think it was probably if I count it in my head around three years, two and a half years, something like that.

1:02Um, I actually never thought that I was going to be an entrepreneur. Not that I never thought it, but I was very much like, I want to be in corporate, I want to climb the corporate ladder. Um, but yeah, I just had these experiences in beauty and working in corporate beauty where I kind of got to the point of realizing that a lot of the brands that I was working on in sort of brand management weren't speaking to me and I was coming up with the marketing messages and choosing the visuals and you know I would get a lot of pushback on certain things and I just got to the point where I was like nobody's focusing on black and brown customers in a very specific way that kind of I could see was a bit of a gap in the market and so I left corporate beauty wanting to start a brand but I didn't know what the brand was going to be.

1:52I didn't even know what category it was going to be in. I kind of just knew who I wanted the customer to be first and foremost. And then I went on a bit of a discovery mission for a couple of years before actually getting to bread. And then you launched in July, 2020, which was not the best time. It was not. And you launched the website, but you also launched with sephora.com. And I just, every time I hear a brand, they're like, oh yeah, we just launched into one of the world's biggest retailers when we were not even existing yet. I need to understand how that happens. Yeah. I think I knew once I had landed on the idea of bread and what I wanted it to be, I knew that part of the strategy for the brand and part of why I wanted the brand to even exist is because I wanted it to exist in prestige beauty.

2:39And of course, Sephora is, you know, number one. My entire strategy for launching the brand was I need to pitch this to Sephora and I need to get their buy-in before we even launch it. And I knew that that was the end goal. And so I just kind of had to come up with ways to make that happen. So a couple of ways, I tried to identify a few different pathways. And at that time, obviously they had the Accelerate program. The form of the program now is a little bit different, but back then it was like part of their corporate social responsibility arm of their business. So they would take on female founders, help you with business development, all of those things, but it wasn't necessarily the program they have now, which is we'll take these brands in and then we'll launch them.

3:23Yeah. You weren't guaranteed to actually get into the store. Exactly. And by this time, I think they were up to maybe like cohort two or maybe cohort three and only like a handful of brands from all of those cohorts had launched. But I thought, okay, that could be a way in. The other way in was how do I just get in front of a buyer? Like what do I need to do to make that happen? Email I knew wasn't going to work because they probably get pitch emails every single day. And to be fair, sometimes it might work, you know, shoot your shots, send the email. But for me, I was like, I need to get in front of someone.

3:58And so there was an opportunity that was coming up for this conference that was happening in LA. And at this time I'm based in Australia, but I knew I wanted to launch in the US. Yes. And so I went to this conference in LA and I knew that there was someone from Sephora that was going to be speaking and it was actually at their time, their head merchant. And I thought, great, I need to get in front of the head merchant. That's a great person to talk to. Yes. And I knew from things I'd done in the past that like the best way to get in front of someone is after they've spoken on stage at a conference and they're leaving.

4:36Yeah. It's like going to the hallways, find them, like try and have a conversation. And so I thought, all right, I'm going to go to LA. I'm going to fly over there, go to this conference. And my number one goal, like my only goal is to get in front of this buyer. And I went to the conference, the head merchant ended up having a conflict, so they never came. It ended up being somebody else. And it was their VP, I believe VP of merchandising for color cosmetics. And she's still there to this day. Amazing woman. And yeah, I just, I found where she was doing her speech. And then, you know, she went on a little break and yeah, I just got in front of her and said, Hey, I'm building this brand.

5:20I'll tell you a little bit about it. You know, what's your advice for getting in front of the hair merchants? And she was like, well, do you have samples? And I said, yes, I have some samples. I had some super, super early stage samples at that point. Were they in your beautiful packaging yet? No. They were just in little like sample jars and you know, we didn't end up launching with those products, but it was just early iteration of something. And so I thought, yep, I've got samples. And she was like, do you have a deck? And I was like, yes, I have a deck because I love a good deck and I learned how to do good decks when I was at L 'Oreal.

5:51And we're going to talk about that because, but before we, before we get into how you, how you nailed that deck and what you shared with them. Something that I think can get so easily glossed over in this conversation is the fact that like, whatever you were sharing with them, you had your story kind of down pat, I think, and you understood like what you were doing and why. And I think that's what people connect with in those conversations. What was your story at that time? That's a great question. I don't necessarily remember. I think it was actually pretty succinct. It was like, I'm creating this brand.

6:29It's for curly and coily hair. There's this gap in the market. I want to create a brand that really speaks to women like me and people like me and my peers. And yeah, she was super receptive. And I think at that time, it was also about timing and being able to identify kind of what's happening within the retail landscape and what maybe you can kind of surmise. is happening behind the scenes. And at that time, like hair care was going through an interesting phase. I knew that hair care was the fastest growing category at Sephora at that point. And I knew that they didn't have a lot of options for curly and textured hair, but I could see that they were trying.

7:06And so I was like, there's something here. They're probably already discussing this behind the scenes. And so honestly, it's almost about like trying to figure out what the problem might be and then coming to them with a solution. It's like I can do X, Y, and Z for this business. Here's the things that I think that I can actually help with. And that's kind of how I pitched the brand. It was like, I can see that there's a gap here. You probably also see it. This brand can really fill that gap. And so she gave me the email for the hair merchant and she said, no, she gave me her email actually. And she said, send me a deck and I'll pass it on to the hair merchant.

7:44And I was like, great. I was like, I'm going to be in San Francisco next week. Just FYI. She's like, cool. We'll send it to me like today. yeah and I sent it to her actually I went home and I made a couple of changes to the deck because I was like I just want to make sure it's perfect even though it was like ready but I was like let's you know zhuzh this up a bit uh sent the deck off and I think it was like Saturday at that point and I heard back from the merchant on Monday they were like I can meet with you tomorrow for 15 minutes and I was like great I'm getting on a bus I actually took a bus to San Francisco everyone was very concerned for my welfare there's like a an interstate bus in every good yeah never again but you know you do what you have to do um and so I ended up meeting with this hair merchant for like an hour and a half and we just spoke about the category spoke about the brand I went through the deck with her and as you say like went through the story and I think story building in those moments is super important.

8:42Because you've got nothing else to go on. Exactly. I have some like little tiny samples but everything was about that deck and about the story of the brand. And, yeah, she said we're interested. Let's stay in touch as you're building it out. And then I also had a connection to the person that was running the Accelerate program. I ended up meeting with them on that day as well. and so I stayed in touch with both of those people but they didn't know that I knew them both. Yep. And so it was kind of like this double approach of going through the front door through Accelerate and then also trying to go through like the back door or the side door to make sure that there were different avenues that I was approaching and then that merchant ended up putting me forward for the Accelerate program so I got to skip over a few steps and I think when you have the backing of a merchant, you're, I don't know this, but you're probably pretty much guaranteed to get into the program.

9:41And so they, yeah, managed to get me in. And then at the end of the program, they were like, yep, we want to launch the brand. And I still didn't even have product at that point. Wow. Finished goods. So that was really exciting. And then COVID happened, but we still launched. At the same time that we had always planned to launch, we just had to stagger it a little bit launch on.com first and then in stores a little bit later. So we're going to get into your retail deck tips and how to make that really work. But I want to go over, I feel like I'm going over your like brand retail CV here because I just want to help people understand like how much success that you've had in stores.

10:23So you launched into sephora.com and of course your own DTC in July 2020. Then a couple of weeks later, you were in stores. By the next year in April, you're in Sephora Australia. Then you launched into Cult Beauty in the UK. By 2022, you launched into Ulta. And I just feel like there are not many brands that are doing Sephora and Ulta that are kind of those founder-led newer companies. And now you are expanding into Boots this year, which is this huge retailer in the UK. So you are obviously really leaning into retail and it's working for you and it feels like it's so effortless and it's just happening and I want to understand what does that deck look like and then why do you think this is happening so organically for you guys?

11:06I think that there's a lot of nuance in the category that I'm in. I think kind of hair care as a category has gone through so much change in the past three and a half years and even sort of leading up to when we launched where there was a ton of white space and there actually still is I feel um and so I think we were able to lean into that a lot and our strategy has always been retail first um precisely because of that because there is this kind of moment where the retail landscape for hair care is changing it's not necessarily completely salon led anymore people aren't just shopping in either the salon or grocery store now they want to get their hair care and prestige because it's part of your total beauty routine.

11:52And so we kind of wanted to ride that wave in a sense, and especially for textured hair where the category is still so not new, but there's still a lot of change happening in this particular subcategory. It's still like maturing as a category. Exactly. Yeah. So we really have been able to craft out this space that is, you know, growing and still maturing in a way where as a brand like we lean in heavily to our kind of like brand universe and really creating something that feels like you're buying into something that is beyond the product which you don't have a lot of in textured hair and so I think because of that we've been able to really dive into retail a lot a lot of retailers want brands to occupy that space and there actually aren't that many on the market.

12:46So and I think that's really tricky to do as well. Like it's not that hard to create a really great product. Like a lot of people can create a really great product. But I think I'm coming to learn that it is actually really hard to create something that has a brand tone and a brand voice that is differentiated and that people really love. Yes, and that has like a point of view as well. I think that's what the brands that do this really well, they've got this like story that's built into like a point of view on the world and on their category. And that gives people something like that emotional entry point to like enter into the universe, which I think you guys do really well.

13:25And like is communicated through your packaging and all of the things that you do. Okay, let's talk about your deck. What is in that deck? Talk me through some of the key things that every retailer deck should have in there and what makes yours special. Yeah, I think that our deck is probably very formulaic, not necessarily anything like crazy or special. I think we just were able to create a deck that had a really defined structure. And so I think it's really important to open the deck with like a story, but really fast. Yeah. And you may think that retailers know everything about the market.

14:06And to be fair, they know a lot more about a lot of categories in general, but assume that they don't. Yeah. I think because you really want to set the tone. There's also so much information that sometimes it is important to kind of remind them like, hey, this is kind of where we're at in the market. This is what's happening. And then sort of explain why this matters for a particular customer. So it's like this is what's happening in the market yeah this customer is either not being served or they don't like x y and z or you know all of these brands are doing this but this customer wants this and then explain why you're filling that gap yeah um and i think that that's a really good way to tell a story because it's like we can see these things happening use facts use kind of like market data yeah um you can also use anecdotes as well we used a lot of social anecdotes so even on social media, like clipping comments and, you know, different, you know, things that being posted on Twitter or Reddit or Instagram of the same thing coming up again and again and commentary.

15:08I think like social listening is super important. And this is what people are saying about you or what they're saying about the category? At this point in the deck, it's about what they're saying about the category or some kind of issue that they're having. And if you see it coming up again and again and again. So you clip those things and you put it in the deck to really help build the story. And, yeah, just lead that into like, I don't know, as an example, you know, maybe it's, and I'm just making this up, but maybe it's like, you know, all of these makeup brands are focusing on, I don't know, waterproof mascara.

15:46This is completely made up. But this customer doesn't want waterproof mascara for some reason or another because they're going jet skiing all the time. I don't know. And it's like, there's no brands out there for people who are jet skiing that want to wear a mascara. Because yeah, I don't know. So it's really about those three things, the market, the customer, you. Yep. And then you kind of explain, in our deck, we explain a lot about the market dynamics and, you know, the brands that exist and all of those things, because that's a big part of it. I think coming into a category and saying, well, our brand is a big differentiator, it doesn't actually work for every category.

16:27There's nuance in this category which makes it so and it's because a lot of brands exist in mass. A lot of brands kind of follow what's been done before. So it's like, well, the category and the brands look like this and the visuals look like this and they're presented like this and those brands are really successful in mass and so we're going to do the same thing. and in textured hair it's kind of been like that for a long time like even today like you go into a mass retailer and you know a lot of the visuals and kind of the presentation feels very like still like 1995. Yeah. And so it can be a really big differentiator in this particular category especially because it's growing and because prestige hair is growing and all of those things so there's a lot of dynamics that come into play to say this is why this differentiator is important in this particular category.

17:17If you were launching a fashion brand and you're like, well, we have a really cool brand. It's like, well, it's fashion. So I would expect you to have a really cool brand. Every fashion brand is probably a cool brand. And so, yeah, I think just looking at your category and figuring out like what are the nuances in that category specifically that make this thing about your brand particularly important. Are you someone who has been or you think you've been like forward-facing in the brand as a um like a a spokesperson are you on TikTok talking about your founder story or do you prefer to be behind the scenes I definitely prefer to be behind the scenes but then we all I I don't know I feel like some people are made for it true yeah it just makes sense um but I am trying to be more forward-facing for the business because it's so so important and people want to know who's behind it um and still to this day like we get comments of people being like oh I didn't realize red was black owned and I'm like do I not do enough videos apparently I don't no I think there are some people who are um you know they're on tiktok every day sharing their founder story and that kind of thing and even if they don't have a huge following it just seems to work like reach the right yeah people I do think you just have to get on there and like constantly show up.

18:41I don't. So yeah, I'm, um, I am not preached like practicing what I preach, but it does make a really big difference in the brands that I see that are doing it. And you think about when you're a founder led brand and you're smaller, and I'm not saying smaller in the scheme of business, I'm talking smaller in the scheme of when you're comparing yourself to these like multinational conglomerate, like CPG companies, the superpower that you have that they don't is that you have a real person who's there listening to customers building this thing and that is such a way for people to connect with what you're creating and so it's just such a you know for people to really like get over that leap of being forward-facing like it's just such a superpower that you can tap into yeah that is worth doing that like work on yourself I think to like actually you're comfortable doing it but God, it's hectic.

19:30I wish it wasn't so, but yeah. I know. And you think about the brand story and there's all of these different ways in the brand that you can show up and share that. And like, it's just one of the ways, right, that you can do that is you being a spokesperson for it. Okay. So more kind of granular in terms of the pages that might be in a deck. I want to stay on this because I just think that it's something that a lot of people struggle with. What are some of the kind of core things aside from showing that storytelling and proving out why you they need you in their business what are some of those other pages that might be in a deck are you putting in press coverage are you putting in um your product offering like what's going in there yeah so once we get through that part of like these are the insights and here's the data and this is what people are doing and this is what the studies are showing so for us it would be like you know what's the size of the category is it growing um can we find any insights online for free that are telling us those reports are expensive they're so expensive so just grab the press release because you'll get some really good nuggets from that or maybe you have a friend that can send it to you um and just kind of showing like behavioral stats as well so at the time for us it was something like this isn't the actual number but it would be like you know 70 % of women are wearing their hair natural versus like two years ago when it was like 30 % something like that um that kind of leads you into the brand story and like why the category is growing like what are people doing that actually make that so um and then once you get through that it's like bam this is the brand yeah like this is the solution this is why we're building this thing and then explaining what the brand is so we start with like the customer we're Like this is the customer that we're serving.

21:17Then we go into like a mini spiel about the brand. This is what the brand is and like who we are. And then we go into our kind of like values and like brand proposition a little bit deeper. It's like, you know, we're these three things. I think in some cases we actually show this is us versus them. Yeah. Really visually as well, I think can be very impactful because you can say it over and over again. But then when you actually show it on a page, it's like, oh, okay, I get it. It just explains it so much more easily. And that's like your packaging, your customer. Our packaging, our customer, our visuals.

21:56The fact that we don't do a lot of like Photoshopping and the way that we present and the visuals that we use are often like very UGC led versus what you see in the category where it can be like super, super Photoshopped, super glossy. And then you show the customer and you're like, this customer doesn't relate to this thing over here. They're going to relate to this. If you're listening to this in the podcast app and you want to see what we're talking about, we actually have some product. So go over to YouTube, go over to the Apple podcast app. Both of those things have video. Spotify does not have video.

22:29So, yes, we've got exactly what the branding looks like for people. Yeah. And so that is the part where, yeah, you're basically explaining like why we're different. You can do it on a chart as well. But for us, it was really important to do it visually and be like, yeah, I love that idea. What we're trying to explain. And to be fair, that's not going to actually resonate with everybody. And it's almost like a way to weed people out, especially when you're pitching to investors, because if they look at that page and they don't get it, they're never going to get it. Yeah. Yeah. If you have to keep explaining it, they're like, well, what's I don't see the difference.

23:05Then, you know, it's kind of like a moot point because you're like, if you don't see the difference. Yeah. It's this is a really big hill to kind of climb over to get you to get there. Yeah. And then there's others who get it immediately and they're like, wow, OK, I get it. Yeah. And so from that part, we go into the product offering. So diving into what that looks like, pricing, size formats, imagery of all the product, usually on one page. So it's just like, this is the lineup. And then we go into kind of like accolades. So it's like, this is the product, you know, sometimes these are our customers, like this is what they care about, maybe quotes of what customers have said about us um product awards press clippings press impressions that kind of thing um and then we wrap it up it depends on the deck but sometimes we'll go into like the company history and like milestones and that kind of thing or we'll just sort of wrap it up there and we usually have a founder slide in there too like founder team yeah um for retail how it's usually just founder for pitch decks.

24:15We include the team. Awesome. I'm actually going to create a template. We'll have our designer create a template in Canva for people to create a retailer deck. And I'm going to put a link in the show notes there because I think a lot of people kind of I'm trying to Google this and figure it out. But yeah, we'll create one for you. We'll keep it free and we'll put it in the show notes for people who want to do this. Yeah. So and it It can actually be quite different from a pitch deck. Yes. So we just kind of figured it out on the fly using a lot of pitch deck models. But I will say I got really stuck in the beginning when I was looking at example pitch decks because I'm like, my story doesn't fit into that narrative.

24:55But I eventually got there where I was like, don't worry about the format. Just worry about the storytelling. It doesn't matter what order these things go in. Yeah. You have to do it in a way where if you were sitting in front of someone and you had to explain it to them by four slides, what do you need to be on there to feel like you've really like nailed the story? Yeah. Like, oh, yeah. Can't wait to see like more and understand more. So I love that. It's such a good takeaway. It's like start with the end in mind of like, what is the story that you want them to like take away once they finish this?

25:27Yeah. You can't just go straight to the end. Yes. You can't just be like, this is the brand. Yeah. You have to build. you have to build like a bit of intrigue and you have to build it's like oh yeah you're right that thing is true and yeah I can see that and oh wow that's a great solution. Awesome so the last thing I want to ask you is about community building this is something that you've done really well and you're using a platform called TYB which is created by Ty Haney yeah who was like outdoor voices and like OG community gal she is an absolute expert at this what are some of the things that you're doing that are working to build community and is it actually translating to sales?

26:03Yes. Yes, it is. And I will say that we have always had a really strong community, but it's been very sporadic. And we've never had a formal community program until we set up TYB last year. We did a bit of a beta test of that with like 60 people and then we grew it to around 300 people and just kind of worked with that group for a couple of months. And then we basically like 3-4x'd it in January. So we went from like 300 to I think we're up to like 1 ,300 people now. And a big part of that was onboarding people who had signed up for what we call trial team. Yep. So we set up this trial team a couple of years ago and it was people that we basically put the offer out there for people to try a product, give us feedback, and we had like thousands of people apply.

26:53and so we really wanted to make sure that we could loop those people into a formal community once we had one set up. And so we're able to convert a lot of those people into our TYB ambassadors and then just a lot of social following too into TYB ambassadors and we're actually definitely seeing the impact of it. Our model is a little differently. Obviously we have D2C but our focus is retail and so a lot of the things we're doing with community are focused on retail. So you're sending them in. We're either sending them in, we're getting them to do reviews, we're getting them to post, driving to retail, or at least speaking about the fact that we're in like Sephora and Ulta.

27:34And yeah, it's working really, really well and people are so engaged, which is amazing and just like seeing so many people get so excited about all of the things that we're doing in that community is actually really, really rewarding. Not just in terms of like business impact, but also just like personally as well. How do you reward people when they take an action? So they take an action, they get coins and basically... That's right, it's like a blockchain thing. But I feel like they're backing away from that a little bit. I think so because I think it's a little bit confusing. I don't care how it's built.

28:05Yeah, just give me discounts. So you get coins that accumulate and then you can use that for discounts on our website. Okay, cool. I love that. And then the very last thing before you go, could you give us a resource recommendation for people who want to build something like you've built? Yes. So one, TYB is great. for community building. It's a great marketing tool. In terms of book recommendations, one that I've been re-listening to that I listened to like years ago that I feel is really impactful is The Magic of Thinking Big. I think it's by Mark Nepo. And obviously it's an old book. So a lot of things in there are outdated.

28:40So don't come for me if you listen to it and you're like, what are you doing? But there are so many lessons in that book that you take the parts that feel relevant still and some of the principles that are still really relevant. And it can really be very impactful. Canva, of course. I'm sure everyone recommends Canva. I used to do like slides like PowerPoint, but now I do Canva. And what else? I would also say, I mean, all the usuals. Slack, use Shopify. We didn't use Shopify initially, big mistake. So just use Shopify. And we use, I mean, I don't know if this is relevant for people, but we use SPS Commerce for our retail.

29:20Yeah. And yeah, and a 3PL. Amazing. Maeva, thank you so much for coming on Female Founder World. I am honestly just I'm such a big fan of what you guys are building and it's so cool to chat with you. You as well. Thanks for having me. Of course. Quick shout out to all of our business besties 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. Head to femalefounderworld.com forward slash subscriber for more.