Sustaining Momentum 10 Years After Launching The Viral Nude Underwear For All Skin Tones

0:00Hey, business besties. Welcome back to the Female Founder World Podcast. I'm Jasmine. I am the host of the show and I'm the person behind all things Female Founder World. Today I have an incredible guest. I'm recording in London with Ade Hassan, the founder of Nubian Skin. You are now entering Female Founder World with your host Jasmine Grinsworthy. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. For people that don't know Nubian Skin, what are you building? So Nubian Skin was the first lingerie brand to create skin tone underwear specifically for women of color. so we launched in 2014 very very simple concept I wanted a nude bra and I couldn't find one so I'd walk into a shop and I'd ask for a nude bra and I'd be given something that would work for you but definitely didn't work for me as it was beige and I got really fed up and thought I can't believe nobody's doing this I'm going to do it it's very naive without a background in fashion but essentially that's that's what Nubian Skin does it's skin tone undergarments for women of color amazing and so you've been around for 10 years now yes incredible you must have been one of the first founders to to kind of act on this opportunity in this gap in the market yeah absolutely so when we launched there was literally nobody doing skin tones that really worked and matched darker skin and had sort of multiple colors that worked across the range as opposed to just having a chocolate brown and so actually one of the proudest things well one of the things I'm most proud of is the fact that we changed the industry.

1:31We sort of really blew open that conversation about what did nude mean. And consequently over the past 10 years I've seen a huge shift starting from when we started to grow into action. Wow, so amazing. When you decide that this is an idea you wanted to pursue, what were some of those big hurdles at the beginning that you had to overcome? Yeah, your face is like all of them, every single hurdle. Well, the biggest thing was the colours. So if you're, you know, a normal, I should at the time, if you were a lingerie manufacturer and you wanted to make a bra and you say you wanted to do nude in quotations, black and red, you'd go to manufacturer and you'd say, I want a black bra, a red bra and a nude bra.

2:13But fabric mills, so the people who actually make all the components that go into bras, the fabric, the hook and eyes, the straps, they don't come in multiple tones of nude. They come in beige. And so I had to create the four colours for the brand, which meant doing a lot of colour research, visiting lots of makeup counters and going back and forth with the factories to try and get the right colour. So that was the biggest hurdle because that was the brand. I can imagine you see this problem and you're like, oh, well, I'll just order the fabric in the right colour and we'll make the bras and the people know how to make bras.

2:49Easy peasy. Exactly. No, not at all. And I remember ordering a Pantone swatch book of skin tones and thinking, oh, this is great. I'll just match it to foundations and I'll send it to the factories. And I tried that and it just didn't work. And I realized I was going to have to make the colors myself. Wow. which at one point ended up with me having pots of tea and coffee, trying to like a varying strengths and different, like trying to get these colours right. This is wild. It's really interesting that you look at foundation as a kind of benchmark of how you match the colours. Well, it was the thing that made the most sense.

3:25So obviously the fabrics didn't exist. And I thought, well, what matches skin tones? Foundation. So went to speak to different makeup artists, asked them what colors they sort of saw were the most popular because I was trying to get the best representation out of the four colors and so um yeah makeup was the sort of it made the most sense to reference that and then try and build fabric colors that matched and you had this kind of crazy launch like as soon as the world found out about what you were doing everyone wanted in yeah I mean it was insane I I remember we did the photo shoot which I was so that was honestly one of my best memories was doing that photo shoot because we had the samples and the models were all excited and it was just so much fun and we did the shoot and then I remember putting an image it was four models four different skin tones are you know three different bras and knickers that we had at the time and I put it on Instagram and we had 50 followers mainly my friends and it just went viral and I didn't know what that meant because I wasn't a social media person at time and it was just me um and I had an intern and the campaign went viral because people just hadn't seen images like that they hadn't seen representation color wise like that but also bodies um that you know weren't stick thin and I think it just really really resonated with people um specifically black women who just kept reposting and retweeting and so it went it started trending on twitter which I was wow um and tumblr at the time I think tumblr doesn't exist anymore I'm not sure and Instagram and so obviously because it was showing up everywhere we then had really big major publications getting in touch saying please can we speak to your press department and I was like did you have a website I didn't have a website I didn't have a website and I only had one email address and so pretty quickly we had a holding page on the website though so that was like number one we were getting all of this sort of inbound and visits I think it crashed the site actually and so we then put an email capture saying if you want to know more you know sign up here so that was key because then when we launched we had I think a mailing list about 20 ,000 people to send out to um and yeah quickly created something called press at nubianskin.com for the press department which was just me that's amazing I think everyone can relate to that the assistant at femalefoundable.com which is me um I totally get that okay that is that is so incredible how long after that moment were you able to get product did you do pre-order no you just had the email capture so we had the email capture because everything was already in production um and that was we went viral in august and we launched and had our product ready in october so um that was about three months it's one of those bittersweet moments where i think if it had happened when we had the product right there I mean you like that would have been perfect right like the best moment ever but I will not complain because I did have a mailing list of 20 ,000 people to say hey we're live um and so yeah that was um there was so there was a space in between them wow when you actually then had your launch you had product ready to go what did you do literally so obviously we got the website live I'll never forget that day because I went to a Lauryn Hill concert um but we put the website live and then we sent out a blast email to everybody who had signed up um saying you know we're live you can shop now uh and yeah then And I expected, obviously, 20 ,000 orders as you do and was shocked as the orders sort of slowly trickled in.

7:19I was like, what is this? 20 ,000 people who wanted to buy my product. So that was another really interesting lesson about you need to sort of don't count your chickens before they hatch. Okay, business besties, let's switch gears for a second. Real quick, I want to talk to you about this season's presenting sponsor, Vistaprint. They are sponsoring this entire season of the Female Founder World podcast and we love a supportive sponsor. So much so that we're actually working with Vistaprint ourselves to create the merch and all of those beautiful event perks that you know and love from our in real life Female Founder World events.

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8:40Use the code FFW25 at checkout and step up your branding game. We put a link in the show notes if you want to learn more. Were you also engaging that list during the time while you were building their product were you sending other emails and updates that's a very very good question and no I wasn't and that's a learning I should have definitely been engaged with them more we did on social media and so that was great we were sort of like dropping little things about the colors and so we really really engaged on social media and Instagram at that time was a completely different animal than it was now than it is now it was still independent it wasn't owned by meta and everything was organic so if people loved what you did then they saw it so it was totally i remember very well going viral was a different thing then yes it meant something now yes like going viral can make a great you know it can really generate some sales but it's not going to like often it's not going to result in true like monoculture like yeah i feel like when you go viral in 2014 you're on new shows you know yes um and you're in mainstream media and it's kind of when we're all consuming the same chronological timeline whereas now everyone's in their own little niche yeah it's all algorithms and it's very different um experience on the internet for going viral have you guys gone viral since and can you make a comparison about what it's like oh that's really interesting um that's a very good question we haven't gone viral in the way that we did then I think there were multiple sort of like waves of you know not quite as big as a virility I don't know I feel like that's a different word altogether so we have the major moment of going viral when the campaign launched and we've had different you know stories being picked up but nothing quite as broad as that yeah okay so that takes me to the next year you started scaling into retail pretty quickly you're picked up by ASOS and Nordstrom and then kind of years later a couple years ago you were picked up by Net-A-Potty as well yes talk me through how those first retailers came about and just some of the things that you've learned about scaling up wholesale over the last 10 years in business now of course so again it was a very different time 10 years ago we ASOS approached us and their buyer was just she just got it immediately yeah um a lot of buyers did not get it at all um but she got it immediately and she approached us before we were even before the website had even launched and she said I love your product I know I've got a customer for this product will you come in and so you can imagine me as like you know a neophyte into the fashion industry being asked to come into ASOS headquarters it was like a dream come true my mouth was just like open the whole time um and had a really straightforward meeting with them they knew what they wanted um and you know I sort of almost like back of the envelope numbers figured out my pricing and things I I had no clue about wholesale um but they were really really easy to work with um and then with Nordstrom we met them at a trade show so there was a huge trade show in Paris for lingerie um called Salon International de la Lingerie and they came to the stand and you know I'm talking to them I hear their American accents it's like oh where are you from and they were like Seattle and I was like oh they're like we're from Nordstrom and I was like oh my goodness oh my goodness sort of the penny dropped um but they again were really heavy adopters and they you know took care of the brand and you know did a really big splashy sort of intro when we launched which was phenomenal huge lessons learned about retail and wholesale because it was an amazing experience and I just said yes to everything yeah um said yes to everything you know sign contracts and it was it was huge it was huge for me it was huge for establishing credibility it was not a profitable exercise for me and so that was you know that's on me as a business owner they're a huge business ASOS was a brilliant partnership I think it's a lot easier because it was just it was e-com yeah and that was sort of a brilliant era in the e-com age but definitely had a lot of lessons learned about making sure that the metrics work for you and also knowing that you can push back.

13:09Yeah. Because I sort of was a... It's a negotiation. Exactly. I was a term taker then because I was so excited. Now I understand way, way more and realize it's a conversation, it's a negotiation. Something that I'm really interested in, I think just like personally now that I'm a few years into our business and like, I don't know, just things have changed so much. And hearing you talk about those early opportunities and how you just say yes to everything and you're like, I'll just, I'll just make it work. If the numbers don't work on this one, we'll make it up on the next one. Like, we'll just figure it out.

13:40How does it feel now being an entrepreneur, like 10 years into this business in a really, the landscape is different. Like your category has grown a lot. I'm sure you're much more like discerning about the opportunities that you take in. And, you know, I'm going to speak about myself personally. Like now I look at a lot of opportunities come and I'm like if that's not going to put money in the bank I really don't care like I'm not doing it for that. How do you feel now as a business owner versus those early days where everything is just like adrenaline and excitement and then you have to kind of like maintain this it's a marathon not a sprint kind of attitude as a business grows.

14:21It's not really a question but I'm interested in how you're feeling now in the business. Yeah I'm I have a lot more wisdom which is great sometimes I kick myself like if only I had this wisdom 100 % my god that's um so that's a huge one um definitely definitely more discerning about opportunities um and very happy to say no actually yeah because you realize that some things will take a lot of effort um and not actually affect the bottom line which when you're running a business ultimately it's about the bottom line um so i said 10 years in i'm still incredibly passionate about our mission which is empowering women and embracing our color and i love interacting with our community that's like one of the best bits um of it it is particularly in fashion retail fashion income right now it's a difficult time and so there is also a little bit of that weariness of being like oh this is you know there have been good times there have been bad times and um this is a tricky moment but still having passion um so yeah I feel like a little bit not not time-worn but just less eager less like a puppy yes and more you're seasoned and more like you know a wise old dog a wise old dog that's amazing I completely get that uh I want to talk about 2016 you talk you You know, we've spoken about some of these exciting moments that happened as the business was getting traction and building.

15:55Talk to me about Beyonce. Oh, my goodness. Oh, that was a really, really sweet moment. It was the summer of 2016. The formation, you know, she had just like dropped her album. The formation tour was on it, you know, about to kick off. And that album was just such a pivotal cultural moment, I feel like. and we were two years not even two about a year and three quarters old and I remember getting an email which said um you know love your brand would love to work with you on the Beyonce concert um blah blah blah you know and he signs his name and I was like delete I just thought like I was convinced it was a scam like there was just no way and um I had a few friends who worked in the industry as stylists and were just like way more connected and so I was like oh maybe I'll just forward them the email just to see you know and I was like guys I got you know this email from this guy like and I remember one of them I think she responded back in all caps saying it's legit respond immediately and so I then freak out because it'd been a few days and I was like oh you know like we'd love to work together please let us know you know and then and then it was the wait game and I remember it was about maybe we waited for about a day or two but the whole that like 40 hour period when we were in the office we were just playing Beyonce non-stop we were like we need to channel like we need to like put it into the universe channel Beyonce vibes and um and eventually he came back and he's like oh this is great this is her site like he don't he already knew I guess he'd probably previously bought it for her he knew her you know her color her size and then they wanted all the dancers to have um to have products as well and so that I didn't even have I didn't even get tickets to the concert because like they sold out so quickly probably because you ghosted Beyonce well at the time I didn't have tickets to the concert but then later on I remember in London the um the wardrobe mistress in London was like hey do you have tickets and I was like I don't she was like don't worry I'll show you it was amazing but it was such that was just such an exciting moment and it felt like you know Beyonce could like she has access to everything and that was a really big testament to the brand that it was doing something that was so needed that even somebody as famous um and with the resources of Beyonce didn't have a nude bra in her color and we were providing that so we were tiny but we were the only company that was doing it and so um that was yeah that was a brilliant moment and when the images from the concert started coming through and I remember seeing a lot of the costumes were lace or had cutouts and I remember seeing Beyonce with you know and being like oh my goodness and I remember emailing him being like is this what I think it is and he just sent a line back saying like 100%.

18:55So yeah, that was a very, very special moment and kudos to her and her team because they really highlighted a lot of black brands in that tour. Yeah, amazing. That gives me goosebumps. Wow. Does an opportunity like that lead to more big opportunities? Does it lead to sales? What does that moment do if you get something like that? I think it depends. We were still very very young we and actually to be 100 % honest even till today we didn't have PR um and so and and I didn't understand the concept of PR I think if we'd had a PR you know really good PR company working with us we could probably have really milked that um it did wonders for us as far as kudos and brand building and it the story did get picked up because we sort of like sent you know things out to different news outlets and so it did get picked up here and there and so that really added to the gravitas of the brand but we didn't have at the time the skill set to really turn that into sales yeah that's really interesting to hear um honestly most of the brands i've talked to don't have pr agencies yeah it's one of those things where i I don't know how you justify a$10 ,000 retainer.

20:14Yeah, that's, I think that's why most independent brands don't have them. Yeah. So yeah, you're definitely not alone with that. In 2017, you won a really big award. I actually think I maybe introduced you incorrectly. I meant to, am I meant to? Oh. Tell us about this. I'll forgive you. Tell us about this. So in 2017, I remember that was, that was an interesting time of the business because we went through we changed production and it was just there was been a lot of work and it was quite a hard year and um I remember just feeling quite like oh I'm working so hard and is are things gonna work out yeah and I feel that gone on holiday I was with my husband and another couple um friends of ours and my sister had like gone to my parents flat um and seen a letter and she was like oh you've either done something really bad or really good because it said like her majesty's like whatever on it and I said to her oh I've been late filing my tax return I was like it's probably HMRC which is her majesty's revenue and customs um and I said yeah I was like could you just open it and just tell me what the fine is and she sends me back a series of text messages just saying like OMG OMG OMG OMG and I was like oh my goodness it can't be that bad You are going to prison.

21:36Literally, I was like, I think it was like maybe three months late. I was like, it can't be more than like a few hundred pounds. And then she sends me a picture and it's a letter and it says, you have been nominated to receive an honour, like an MBE from Her Majesty the Queen. Big deal. For services to fashion. Wow. And I'm literally, I remember I was at Mykonos Airport at the baggage claim and I burst into tears. Also, you're not allowed to talk about it. You're not allowed to tell anyone. And so, because it's like embargoed until, you know, they actually released the list. It's like burst into tears and everybody's like, what is going on?

22:16And I just felt it was really that phrase, services to fashion, because, you know, small independent brand, you know, doing what almost seems like a thankless task. And then you're getting honoured, you know, for services to fashion and that just yeah that was incredible um and it was announced in the summer it was announced in June um I think I got the letter in April or May it was announced in June and then in October I got to go to Buckingham Palace with my husband and my parents in their like full traditional you know Yoruba Nigerian clothing um and get my MBE that's incredible it was it that was a really really special moment wow how how does somebody get nominated what's the process for an award like that I have no idea and so to this day I have no idea who nominated me because they won't tell you so I remember I went for a meeting at some point afterwards and I was like so who and like they they don't tell you um and I know that there's an application process and they have to have quite like almost like a dossier of information.

23:28And so I've asked everyone. Everybody in my family denies it. And my one team member at the time also denies that she did it. And so I have no idea who... Come forward. Take credit. Every time people ask me about this in an interview, I always say, if you're listening, thank you so much because that was a very, very kind thing to do. So I don't know. I do know that some people actively pursue it, which again I didn't I didn't even know at the time that you could do that I thought you literally had to be like friends with the prime minister to get one um so there is an official process and it's an application process and you have to be nominated but I have no idea who did it for me that's amazing I want to talk about you opened and then closed a showroom what is that process like worth the money not worth the money so um I this was this was in I think this was in 2017 um we moved offices and we found a very almost rickety space in central London so it was an amazing location it was um by Tottenham Court Road and um pretty much a shell and it was tiny space um I think it was about it was probably the whole thing was about 24 square meters and it split into two and so we had the offices in one bit and then in the main bit we'd put sort of rails and um you know basically opened a showroom and so it wasn't sort of a showroom in the sense of like you know I think sometimes there's some very very nice glossy showrooms in say New York London um that are professionally run but this was just Nubian Skins offices and we created a space where we could welcome people they could come for fittings we could you know if we had buyers who want to see the collection we could show it and our rent was very it was not very expensive that was reflecting the fact that it had no heating or air conditioning or anything else but it was wonderful it was a really wonderful moment where we could really engage with customers and just sort of have a little like haven of Nubian skin um and so it was definitely worth it for us because it was all sort of home you know homegrown um and it wasn't particularly really expensive but the location was amazing um and we had like lovely events there and had some really cool people drop by as well remember the cast of a bunch of the cast of hamilton came in once and that was just like amazing and they were just like having a play around and then uh what's her name amber riley from glee stopped by with somebody once and so that was it was just a really cool little community hub that yeah to have there so it that was a really special lovely moment um and then I got pregnant in 2019 congratulations thank you and um had my son six weeks before COVID and then the party ended because the world shut down and then the UK was basically locked down on and off for almost two years so yes um gave up that space obviously once it had been once our lease was up because it was empty for a year nobody was doing anything like bra fittings during that time.

26:37But it was a lovely moment. It was a brilliant, yeah, it was a brilliant time for community building and just having a space that was very, very Nubian skin. Would you do something like that again? I love the idea of having a physical space where we could bring people together. Yes. You know what? I would. Now we're focused on doing community events and so we try and do monthly sort of get-togethers with our community, which has been amazing. Call them Nubian Beings events. community events and so that sort of helps fill that space of community building. Right now with the way the team most of the team is remote actually we all work remotely and we have a studio and I usually go into the studio so there's not that same dynamic.

27:25Things have shifted a bit where you know before everybody was in the office and so running a showroom made sense because people were there all the time but now it's now it's a little bit trickier how do you feel about that having you know more remote not kind of centralized in the same space do you think it impacts i mean our team's fully remote and sometimes i think if we just were all together every day would we get more done i don't know i think it depends on the team um my core team right now work brilliantly remotely like it wouldn't matter if they were home or if they're in the office and we speak sometimes we'll go months and we won't see each other and we'll see each other in person I'm like oh I haven't actually seen you physically yeah in a long time but we're on teams all the time with cameras on all throughout the day and so um I don't feel like I'm not seeing them um but they are phenomenal I have had team members who don't work well remotely and it hasn't worked out and so um with the current team I have absolutely working remotely works well um obviously it's fun when we all get together because that's just like it's just fun because we like each other yeah um but yes I think it has to be the team has to be very disciplined for that to work well you spoke about the community events before and I'm really curious about this kind of thing we're seeing shift at the moment where it's like influencer marketing has shifted to community marketing I feel like it's um you know rather than straight like influencer press trips or um influencer gifting we're seeing more brands focus on their customers in their true community and treating them like the influencers that they are so I find it really interesting that you're doing this like community event series has that always been something you've done is that a new shift talk to me about that yeah of course so it really began with um during covid i started everybody was at home in lockdown and so i started a series called new bean beings live where throughout my journey as an entrepreneur i had met an amazing woman um who were doing really really cool things and so i started interviewing them on instagram live cool about you know their companies or their journeys um depending on whatever they were doing um and that was a brilliant way of sort of engaging people and so this year we decided to relaunch it but it's more of an interview series um you know that goes in our newsletter yeah um and with that there've been so many women who just have cool brands that I think that my community would like and so every now and then we'll do an event where I think the last one was um uh body butter making so there's this really cool british brand that does like all sort of very nice organic natural stuff and got the community together and we had a session around how do you make a body butter we did an international women's day community event where we had a panel of some of these amazing women and so it's really almost cross-pollinating with um other brands that have that i know our community would love and enriching their lives in a way but also that helps build our brand because it helps build our community and help them you know outside of you know bras and knickers it's actually like we're actually a community and we get on and it's really lovely seeing the woman in the community interact and sort of make friends you know because people show up and you know they haven't bought anyone and they're like oh my goodness you're really cool yeah I love that too yeah that leads me to my last question which is you know from when you look at marketing right now what is working is anything working tell me it is a very tricky time yeah um i think the e-commerce space is saturated at least for us our niche quote unquote is now you know there's way more competition um and social media has changed so much we were overly reliant on organic because that's all we'd ever done and it had performed really well for us um and now we realize whoa like it's not it's not just having a good product and it's um you really have to figure out like what what does work well yeah email marketing is really important for us yeah um who do you use for email we use klaviyo yeah um so email marketing is really important for us and even with that we're still constantly learning and iterating we've never really had much success with meta and metas we're on there we have a huge following on there but paid ads wise that's been very tricky for us interesting um but google um there was a huge algorithm change i think earlier this year which like really did a number on us but we're back on it now and seeing like really good results but we've i think really making sure that one your seo is doing what it needs to do which we hadn't now we are and we can see it like very good results from that um and you mean organic seo Organic SEO.

32:24How did you do that? I hadn't done anything. Right. It was terrible. But you would have had so much press and links and all of that. Exactly. So we just thought we didn't even think about it. And then obviously now with a more difficult landscape, we had an amazing freelancer who was like, huh, right. You guys really need to start from zero on this. And so he's been walking us through all the steps that we need to do. those tags the language we're using um and so that's been incredibly helpful and um and also we have a freelancer working with us with our google ads just getting one our analytics like up to scratch where it needed to be um and then starting to test um different ads and keywords um and that's been performing as well so yeah it's sort of an ongoing journey ever evolving journey as well how do you find these experts or these freelancers to kind of help you because i think you know i keep hearing from folks like they keep getting burned by agencies oh my goodness how do you find great freelancers i echo that i have been like my heart still hurts yeah from being burned by the amount of money i've spent on paid ads in past businesses and nothing no it's like truly saddening um with our e-com expert gary if you're listening um he actually my accountant works for his company and when i was sort of going through some of the problems i was having she was like i'm gonna introduce you to somebody and so that was a very friendly introduction from somebody who really knew my business and his business and thought you know and so when somebody comes and we had multiple conversations.

34:10I was like, this guy's like a real guy. And so that's how I met him. And then we found our Google expert on Fiverr. Oh, wow. Literally went on Fiverr and we were like, this is what we need, you know, you just put it in. Yeah. And he had brilliant reviews, like 900, like five-star reviews. And so we were like, well, he's got to be doing something right. I love Fiverr. Oh my goodness, he's been brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Amazing. Ade, thank you so much for coming on the Female Founder World podcast and congratulations on everything that you're building at Nubian Skin. It's very, very impressive.

34:45Oh, well, thank you so much and thanks for having me. This has been fun. I just wanted to jump in and end the show with a quick thank you and shout out to all of our paid Business Besties subscribers. For$9 a month, Business Besties bypass literally years of networking by getting access to all of the people that you need to build your dream business. Besties get access to exclusive in-person meetups in cities all across the US, Australia, and the UK. You get access to our group chat and you get to bypass the waitlist. You also get invited to exclusive monthly group business coaching call sessions where you can speak to experts and founders and ask them all of those questions that you just can't Google.

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