How to start your NPD, Jianne Jamil, DIOME

0:00Welcome back to How to Startup, the podcast that dives into stories of startups told directly by the founders. I'm Juliet Fallifield, founder of Fallifield & Mason, a consultancy that teaches founders how to confidently run their PR and podcasting in-house. In today's episode, we're joined by Jeanne Jamil, founder of Diome, a premium supplement brand developing science-backed formulas to support the demands of modern life. Inspired by her mother's decades-long struggle with prescription sleep medication, she set out to create an effective, natural alternative without the negative side effects.

0:32We discuss in today's episode NPD, new product development and everything that goes into it from the formula to the packaging to the people. So stay tuned to hear Jian's insights on where to start with your NPD, building a science-led wellness brand and how to market those premium products. Welcome Jian to How To Start Up. It's wonderful to have you on today. I know we're going to chat about how to develop an NPD, but before we do that, I'd love it if you could introduce yourself to the listeners and a little bit about the brand that you started. Yeah, definitely. So my name is Jeanne. I'm the founder of Diom.

1:07I started Diom over four years ago, but we actually just launched last year. So the first three years were really focused on developing innovative products that were effective and that were going to help people with their daily ailments. So I worked for brands like La Mer, Tom Ford, Bobby Brown, amazing experience in the beauty industry. But what I was really passionate about was holistic health. And I had seen my mother throughout the decades really struggle with her sleep and anxiety, being prescribed medication and not really being able to regain natural sleep patterns or really find herself again once she stopped.

1:49And so that's really the mission behind Xeon. It's finding these solutions really for people ahead of time when they're starting to feel these ailments because of the modern world that we live in. You've launched, I think, one product so far. Yes. So, so far, Rested. We did a soft launch last year with a harder push this year. It's so interesting in the wellness space. A lot of brands come in all guns blazing with huge product lines. You've come in gently with one product rested with a focus on it? And why did you decide to launch just one? It takes a lot of effort, time, energy, budget to innovate in this space.

2:30So I wouldn't say it's as much as the pharma space, but if you want to create a product that's innovative, that works really hard, that's safe, that's also going to be compliant on the regulatory front in many markets, it's going to take some time, especially if you want to test that product on humans and reiterate again and again. And this is what we've done with Rested. It was really important to us that every single product that we were going to launch was going to be truly unique and effective. I think the efficacy piece is so crucial because there is a lot of stigma within the natural health space, the supplement space that it doesn't work or it doesn't work as hard and that people do not trust these products.

3:16And I understand why, because I've also as a consumer experienced that in the past. And it wasn't really an option to create many products at that point, because we wanted to focus on one or two, and we can speak about the second one that we've developed also. But it was really about being very focused, understanding exactly the problems that we're solving and solving for problems that were the epidemic of our time. So we know today that a third of the world population just does not sleep well enough. And so that's enough of a challenge to tackle and to find a really strong solution for. And that's why instead of putting our energy in many different products, we just wanted to focus on one and do it really, really well.

4:05So interesting to say that. A lot of people I've interviewed for the podcast have said this. It's like, pick your specialism and go deep. Like, you cannot walk into a room and tell people you're a specialist in 30 different areas. They're not going to believe you. Do one thing, do it really well. But in terms of that specialism and that expertise, I know that you have a similar background to mine. You've come from the world of luxury brands. You work for Le Maire, Tom Ford, Bobby Brown. What lessons from those experiences have shaped your approach to founding your brand today, if any? Yeah, it actually ties to what we just spoke about, is that the best businesses and brands are built on hero products.

4:41So as much as these brands were innovating and had incredible new products coming up, some brands more than others, I would say. Well, Le Maire, yeah, exactly. Especially my experience at La Mer, I would say it's really that hero product that drove the business. And I really saw that the key to any consumer business is retention. And I was on the retention team. I was responsible for it and for loyalty in the UK. And so I really understood that in order to have longevity as a business and not a one and done, and this is what I wanted to build, something that would last decades and that people would love and it would become a household name.

5:23We really needed to focus on longevity and products that had very strong retention. And so that was definitely the best lesson that I've learned at Estee Lauder. The second one is the kind of brand love, high touch elements to all of these brands and seeing how thoughtful the creatives, the marketers, everyone on the team was going to be around how is the consumer going to experience this brand? And we need to put a lot of love into every single touch point from end to end. And so that experience was also great because you realize how much actually goes on behind the scenes and you wouldn't really know that as a consumer.

6:08So those are the two main lessons that I say I learned and that I wanted incorporate into Deon. It's amazing. So you spent three years developing the brand, the product, the everything before coming to market and launching. What were those first steps in getting your MPD going? The very first step was finding my scientific team. So as you just said, I come from a luxury background. I'm a marketer and I wanted to go into the health space. That's an unforgiving space and it should be. And so I knew that in order to create something meaningful, I had to partner up with the best scientific talent that I could find.

6:51And so that actually took me over six months looking for my scientific team. And I was so lucky to meet Emily Delanoux, who is our product director. And she's been with me since day one. I met her through my early advisor at the time. She was her naturopathic doctor. And so with Emily, I've had a few calls and we were so aligned on the needs and the really white space in the nutraceutical market and also the passion and wanting to create something. It was beyond, obviously, that we all want to have commercial success and that's how businesses grow and survive. But it was so much more than that for both of us.

7:31And she also agreed as a health practitioner that there was a need and there was a wide space and that together we could create something really special where I could really lead the brand, the strategy, the commercial aspect, and she could lead the product development and really finding all the right partners for us to be able to create something special. and the first partner that we had to find was our formulator. And so Dr. Maria at the time was Emily's professor at the Integrative Institute in Paris. And Emily introduced me to her and she said, I just have a feeling she's really the person for us.

8:11She's incredibly knowledgeable. She has so much experience in innovation and development in the nutraceutical space. And she would be an incredible person to bring on board. And when I met Dr. Maria, it just clicked and I knew that she was going to be the one. I definitely think it's instinct, but I had already spoken to over 60 other doctors, health practitioners, lab scientists. So when I met her, I just knew that after all of these conversations, that was the person that was going to make this happen for us on the formulation side. Because it would be so hard because when you're looking at the end result and the beautiful packaging beautiful branding beautiful imagery that consumer touch point that they get they don't know that you actually couldn't get distracted by all of that good stuff you had to do all of the core inside of the jar first and that is people and everyone says this people make or break any business and in the startup world it's very hard to get the right people at the right time in the right place especially when you're trying to raise or take funding i was going to ask you with the three years before the launch.

9:20Your pre-revenue, how were you funding the business? So I self-funded the business and I had a small friends and family and early advisors around as well. And it definitely is a big undertaking. And I need to be honest about that because I think sometimes you hear podcasts and you hear founders talk about how they've self-funded something and then they got this huge raise and it's so much work even doing that friends and family pre-seat that was a lot of work that was very uncomfortable i had to learn a completely new skill set i'm very lucky and i want to be transparent about that that my husband is a dc and he was so supportive he coached me he introduced me to people he really helped me feel that confidence and helped shape the narrative speaking to investors which is definitely a muscle it's a flex and it's a skill set to acquire and no one knows how to do it before they actually have to go ahead and do it oh god that expression experience is what you get after you've needed it and the thing with a founder and i think this is why i find this podcast so interesting when i speak to people is that you have to have so many different specialisms to run a business or start a business but you're not a specialist in any of them and you might be a specialist in your previous role so for me it was luxury pr and consumer goods and press but then running a company I was like I've never had to write an employee contract I don't know what my terms are I need to set up our accounting software I love that stuff because my brain was happy because it was learning things that were new but I wasn't on a deadline of launch so I'm a service-based business it's very different with a product-based business, MPD, new product development.

11:06It's new, it's a product and you have to develop it. That's a lot. But before all of that, you get the raise, you get the investment, then you look for your partners and your people. So once you'd found your, is it chief science officer? What's Emily's role again? So Emily is our director of products and Dr. Maria is our formulator. Fine. So then you'd found Emily and Dr. Maria. What was the next step in your new product development stage. It was agreeing on which products we should start with. Oh, right. So you hadn't already decided it was sleep. We knew that there were a few ailments that health practitioners and consumers did not have readily available in one product.

11:49So they had to keep combining different ingredients and making a little cocktail for themselves. We knew that, but we had to make a choice, right? Where to start. And actually it was Dr. Maria that was very firm. And she said to us, I will only work with you if we focus on sleep and stress, because that's the epidemic of our time. This is what I'm seeing in my office. This is what I have to prescribe my patients over 10, 20 different ingredients and products and have them mix it at the pharmacy in Paris, because that's a possibility in France, which it isn't here. And we need to really combine that know-how into products that are readily available.

12:34And of course, one product is never going to work on 100 % of the population, but she was confident that it was going to work on 80 % of the population because of her expertise and her knowledge, both clinical and in practice. and so she really made that decision for us how wonderful having that clarity and that support of I'm looking in the eye of someone who's an expert and who knows the population but your market as you said 80 % and the epidemic that we're in and also everybody listening who's starting and scaling a business is going to be very tired the fact you have one product and I love the fact it's just called rested because you know exactly what it's going to do for you yeah so she put her foot down as like, we're focusing on sleep and anxiety.

13:18What was the next step after that? After that, we had to give her the space to formulate. So what I mean, the space, it's time, it's support. And it's, I would say, Emily's time in terms of checking all the regulatory steps. Every time Dr. Maria would put a formula together on paper, we had to double check, Is this going to work for the US? Is this going to work for the UK? Are these ingredients available? How much do these ingredients cost? Is it going to be possible to keep the price at that? So it was a lot of back and forth. Every time we changed a couple of grams of each ingredient to make sure that it was available, that we could source and source well, that it was going to be at a price that was acceptable for the consumer at the end of it.

14:10we are a pricey supplement. Obviously in the beauty space, 60 pounds is not that expensive compared to the creams that are now at 300, 400 pounds if we're talking luxury. But in the supplement space, we were aware that it was going to be expensive if we wanted to do something really high quality and we wanted to keep the price as low as possible because we also want to be inclusive because that's part of our mission. So it was a balancing act throughout. And every time we'd say, okay, this formula on paper is great. Let's go and formulate it. We would go formulate a small batch and have it tested on about 20 people in our network.

14:53And then use the LSEQ, it's called, questionnaire, which a lot of pharmaceutical companies use as well to really check that the formula was working for everyone. And then we would go back to Dr. Maria and say, people are sleeping really well, but it's a little hard for them to wake up. we need to rework it okay they're sleeping well but they slept better with the first version so how can we combine that and then one of them actually we last about this anecdote within the brand is that we had an ingredient that made people have very vivid dreams and so that ingredient had to go and so it was really reiterating again and again until sounds exhausting it's exhausting the irony of that and it's just you're supposed to feel arresting and I guess there's three of you doing this so you can support each other through it if one of you's getting disheartened the other one's no no we're so close we're getting there the iteration the iteration but that whack-a-mole of okay we're we're 90 forwards 20 backwards 40 forwards 50 backwards how did you know that you were done and you were ready when the majority of the people testing it were asking for more.

16:08So they would come back to us, you have more samples. I really want more. Do you have more? And so that's when you know you have market fit on a tiny sample of participants. And personally, we also had tested it, right? So we were taking it, we took our time testing it. So it's like we did it for two nights, we did it for a month, two months, and we had Oura rings and whoops, and we use whatever tracking device we could get are hands-on. And so at some point, I also think in the R &D phase, you can get caught up by just wanting to do better and better, whether it's on the brand or on the product side.

16:43But you do have to launch at some points and you have to trust that you've done your best and that you're proud of what you've done and that this product is already helping people. And so it needs to go out into the world. And that's what we did. And I think sometimes we shy away from speaking about intuition in business because obviously there's so many things that you have to do that aren't part of how you feel about things. But intuition was the guiding light throughout my career. The choice of even joining Lauder at the time after college or starting this business, a lot of it was intuition.

17:19And I think tapping into that and being confident and tapping into it is important and I really tapped into it when it came to these big decisions too because I had them on paper and it was an obvious yes but that was the extra push that I needed to make these final decisions that did feel very final I think on the product side more than the brand side ever it's so interesting you say that there's a lot of people I've spoken to or working with that say you can lay all the groundwork you can do all the sums you can do all the spreadsheets but that then affords you space for the magic to happen and it's that intuition whether it's magic or dust or gut feeling or nuance or fate lots of people have different words for it but there's something I've noticed across all the founders is like you know it in your gut you have to trust and believe your feelings and in business I mean no VC would probably want to invest in someone that's building a business of feelings but I think it's coupled together right You need the spreadsheets and you need the gut feeling.

18:22And obviously after a good night's sleep, your gut feeling will have more clarity around it for you to move forward. So tell us about the product Rested. What does it do? Yeah, so Rested was a very clear brief. We wanted people to sleep really well, have very high quality sleep, but also wake up feeling energized in the morning. And that's the bit I think that really makes it special because you can find products on the market, whether pharmaceutical or nutraceutical, that will help you fall asleep. And a lot of people obviously use melatonin, even though in the UK, you have to get it on prescription.

18:56It's readily available in the US and you can always get your hands on it. And so there are products out there that will help you fall asleep. But then what's that quality of sleep that you're getting throughout the night? And how do you feel when you wake up? Not just when you wake up, but how do you feel at 11 a.m. and then throughout the day and then in the evening? So that was really the focus for this product. It wasn't just about, we help you fall asleep. It's about your body knows exactly what it needs to do. It's being disturbed all day because of the modern lives that we're leading. Ideally, our brand would not exist in the perfect world, because our bodies are 100 % equipped to do what they need to do.

19:42And listen to that circadian rhythm. I interviewed Russell Foster, who wrote a book about sleep. He's the head of Neuroscience at Oxford University, and he was saying how circadian rhythms seek a deer about a day. It's about 24 hours. Our bodies are in tune with that, and we're in tune with the season. So take away all technology, take away all lighting, we would work it out and go back to sleep and have a decent night's rest. But given that we have made a rod for home bags, rested comes in to placate that awfulness that we've created. Yes. And so it was really about improving the quality, making sure that every hour that you're getting everything that you can out of those hours, and then you wake up feeling like I'm ready to tackle the day now.

20:26That's what a good night of sleep is supposed to feel like at the end of the day. It's not just about being asleep for a long time, which is now I think the awareness is there slowly because of the conversations that we're having today, the podcast. It's really in the zeitgeist of the awareness around sleep. And we really wanted to focus on let's make sure your day is also great because you've had a great night. And so that's what makes it unique. we're taking a quick 30 second break from this episode to ask are you thinking of starting your own podcast if so this is great news because we run a course that will train you how to produce your own podcast yourself this course is for people who do not want to outsource and pay someone else to do it you want to learn how to do it yourself we teach you everything that you need to get up and running with your own podcast show and so much more just dm us at hello at Fallowfield Mason to book your spot.

21:27The supplements and wellness market is highly, highly competitive and every year gets more so. How did you identify your niche for Diome and what strategies have helped with that? It is, I would say in general, it's obviously a huge industry and it's growing, which is always great to be part of a growing industry. I saw that with skincare when I was at La Mer. That being said, there aren't that many premium brands in the supplement space, I guess you could count them on two hands internationally. So when I talk about brand, it's both amazing products that are science backed, where there is a real scientific team behind it, innovation, testing, but also branding and connection to the consumer and attention to detail, to messaging, to the creative assets, to the packaging, and a product that says something about you because you're using it.

22:22And so I think it's marrying these two, that is a lot of work and a lot of investments, both in time and budget. And that's really, I think what makes us special. And what I wanted to focus on was never cutting any corner on both ends. And it's difficult because at some point you have limited resources, again, in terms of budget, in terms of time, you have to really get it going. But I think it's us being so thorough and saying it's better not to launch than to launch something we're not happy with when it comes to at least the efficacy and how the product is going to be presented to the consumer.

23:01And those high standards really set us apart. Especially given that retention is the crux of the business. The customer acquisition will be costly, but then the retention hopefully will be there because the efficacy is so good. it's a no-brainer that they'll continue and I always catch myself I subscribe to nothing I don't have Netflix I don't have Amazon Prime and my friends like what are you doing with your life but it's because I heard this podcast years ago about the subscription model of a business that once you're a subscriber you forget people have all of these subscriptions they're spending all of this money that they don't even know they're not even getting the product right anymore so I'm not the normal person when it comes to these things but you've got that moment to introduce the brand to somebody, if they don't come back, they're never going to come back.

23:44So it's very important for you to get it right the first time. Whereas a lot of, I think, service-based businesses I've interviewed have said, actually, just get going, get out there, iterate as you go. You can test and learn, services evolve. But product, I think, behaves in a different way. I think especially in health, especially in ingestibles, and especially sleep, I don't think we had the easiest entry points. And I always say there are many barriers. and we have to work on the education, on the advocacy, on the trust. And it's really a halo effect. Once people do start using it, it's getting into people's hands and it does the marketing for itself and the retention for itself as well.

24:24Well, the best PR is that word of mouth. It's the mascara effect. If you see a friend wearing a great mascara and they tell you what it is, you believe them. That word of mouth is insane. And obviously press is really important as well, but it can fly for you. You've done the hard work, you've taken it out to market, and now your clients will be your biggest ambassadors, I'm sure, given what you've built. One thing I wanted to ask you about is you've been working on the product development in terms of what it does and how it affects people. When did you let yourself get distracted by branding and packaging and all of the fun stuff that a lot of founders are like, I need a brand, I need a logo, I need a business card.

25:00It's like, you don't, you need the product first, but when did you let yourself go there? When Dr. Maria started formulating and I had the headspace to find my creative partners in that domain. So obviously, like I told you earlier, it did take a few years. And from the first few months, I knew that was my role. I really had to create a brand that people loved. And so that started with finding an agency to do it with. Again, it's the partners that you find. So I found my scientific partners, very important. felt very confident that we were going to make something special happen. I believe we had a couple of samples already and we knew what the products were going to be, the very first two.

25:44And that's when I started doing an extensive search into the brand world. And that meant having another air table, not with doctors and scientists and labs, but with branding agencies and creatives. And I looked at every agency in the world, I mean, from Australia to the US, the UK, all of Europe. This is what happens when you grow up in luxury brands. You don't leave any stone unturned. And I think it's a lot of the work that people don't see. They just see the one end result, but it's all of the groundwork that you've put in to know that you've made the right decision. But that takes time and energy and effort.

26:22so you vetted them internationally the way we work these days you can work internationally with brands it didn't matter to you that you weren't necessarily going to see them in person it was also covid so we didn't have it so it's quite liberating in that sense yeah it was in a sense it was and you didn't have to get on the flight to new york and you could just do these calls and it was normal to do them on zoom how did you refine your choice with them i love references and the referrals and just understanding how they've worked with past clients and what type of work they did. And it's not about what brand were you a part of?

26:59It's what did you do for that brand exactly? Because you can see one brand on many different branding agencies, websites, and then you start thinking at what stage should you come in and what exactly did you do and your team and who was on that team and what did that person do and I think that was it's going back to the people and vetting people rather than just like big name agencies and that's why I stayed away from the very big agencies that offer comfort to a first-hand founder because you think if they've done this brand so well then they can definitely help me build a brand but then And the people might not be in the team.

27:41The people that did that case study might not still be there. And I wanted to work with the founders of any agency that I was going to work with, because I know it's just different when the founders are involved and the stakes are much higher for them as well. And that was a prerequisite of mine. And not everyone is going to agree to that when you're a 20 something year old coming to them with this idea, not even a finished product and demanding to speak to the leadership and that they will be part of your project. And so again, I think it was a lot of research and time and it was also instinct.

28:18And when I met the team at Acne in Stockholm, I just loved the team so much and they really understood what we were building. They were behind brands that I loved as a consumer by Redo, Westman Atelier, Nome, the beer. I don't drink beer, but I love what they've created with that brand. It's everywhere today, but even four years ago, it was very niche. And I thought they had made like an incredible job at that. And so I wanted to meet the real people behind those brands. And I read a lot of interviews as well. We didn't have Chad GPT back then. So it was a lot of Google and reading the actual articles and understanding who did what and who was mentioned in articles about these brands.

29:02And that's really the team that stood out. They were the first people I spoke to, actually. And then in the end, it was them. So I had done all of this research, but it just confirms sometimes that your gut is so strong and you just need the reassurance of the actual process being done properly. And I think the process, I just want to touch on that because maybe it's helpful for some founders. I noted everything down. So I had an Airtable at the time. We now use Notion. But back in the day, it was on Airtable. And I had the name of the agency, all the brands that they had worked on, what they had done for these brands, how much they were asking for our brief.

29:45and keeping track of all of that is really important because sometimes we write it down somewhere and then we forget and then we try to remember. So keeping track of all of those conversations, all the comments, also the feelings that I was getting as I was speaking to them, that was really key. And that helps make that decision. And another thing is the brief. The brief is just as important and that goes for the product development as much as the brand development. So what do we want to do together? What do we want to achieve together? What do I need your help with, your support with? And that is really important because the project can only be as good as the brief that was given to the team.