Melanie Bender: Founder and CEO of Lore

25:11Melanie Bender:It was taking that movement, but doing it for everyone. Well, it was democratizing it. And I think clean, however, one wants to or chooses to define that today. There are lots of variations of it. But like, that was not table stakes when Burst was in its infancy, when Merit was in its infancy, like it still felt like a very early aspect of it, let alone having the audacity to bring that to a mass market consumer at Target. Like that was outside the box at that point in time. It was an exclusive thing, Cleen. Honestly, like as were beauty products that were really effective as were beauty products that like you just love how they look on your shelf those were products that were sold at sephora and department stores they were not products that were sold at target they were not products that you could you know kind of fill your makeup bag with for under 50 and in really understanding the spirit of who were and what you guys built it was always about accessibility it was always about connecting the best of the best of what was out there whether that was this amazing fashion trend or this growing movement of products that do amazing things, but that are products that we feel good about using.

26:27Well, we loved having you. And then we're very excited also for your next role, which was you moved on to the brand road. Some might know from the one and only Haley Bieber as CEO in 2022. It was really small at the time, like five or six employees if memory serves. But obviously it had brand recognition and name recognition to a degree, but not even remotely like the way it is today. So talk to me about how you knew the time was right and the opportunity was right to make that move.

27:06Melanie Bender:Yeah, I mean, what was really fun is I had started talking to Haley and Rode before Rode had even launched. so it's kind of this bird's eye lens to understanding how they were thinking about it seeing the first bits of it come to life how did i know honestly i didn't it was a very big and a very hard decision as was you know the decision to go from my role in brand development to leading first both of those were incredibly scary decisions and i remember in the moment not being sure if I could do it. And I remember calling up my therapist and having a conversation with her. I have this offer on the table to be the GM of hers, this brand that I built.

27:48Melanie Bender:I don't know if I can do it though. And the incredible thing that she helped me articulate was the difference between excitement and fear. Fear is based on anticipating harm, something to be aware of. Excitement is based on what's the potential. And when she helped me think about that. I knew that that nervousness, that anxiety that I was feeling, it was because of excitement. It was because I really wanted this. And once I registered that, I knew I had to do it. It didn't mean that I didn't have the fear. It didn't mean that it was easy. It was similar feelings with road. I could feel the potential there, but I also felt that same anxiety.

28:27Melanie Bender:What excited me was the opportunity and the potential to really move culture forward, feeling and seeing what Haley brought to that brand and what Haley brought to the space and skincare as a whole. And I knew I couldn't not do it. Proved to be a good bet. I just want to put out there for the record. So road crossed the eight figure sales threshold in 11 days of selling. Obviously the sky has been the limit from there, big acquisition, all sorts of crazy things have happened since then. How did you identify some of that secret sauce that you felt in the room and then use your expertise to capitalize on it.

29:07Melanie Bender:My role at Rode was really functionally different than my role at Versed and my role at Lore. You know, Versed and Lore were very much my brands. I was driving the brand identity, driving the culture of the brand, driving the products. At Rode, my role was CEO. I was the operator. Honestly, it was really cool to kind of step into those different sides of it. Was that hard to give up some of the creative piece of it? It wasn't hard in real time, but in reflecting a year later on what do I want to do more of, you know, definitely coming out of road, I felt that looking forward, I didn't have the passion to operate other people's brands.

29:46Melanie Bender:I love the brands that I got to do with other people, but the magic wasn't there anymore. So in that sense, I think like it helped me clarify like what was next for me, but it was huge for that just to be what I woke up and thought about was how do I operationalize and execute someone else's vision? I think it gave me just such a different lens and level of focus on those things, level of focus on execution. What does it mean to get a business ready, you know, to take in eight figures of sales and 11 days of selling? What does it mean to keep up with this pace of demand and interest from the world, but also to do it with the level of attention to detail that makes it special and kind of understanding the constant tension between those things, between being precious and visionary in how you want to show up and then doing that in this real world environment across, you know, first one country, but expanding road to eight different international countries to new product categories, really just an exercise in discipline and intention.

30:54So before we get into lore, I also need to ask, what was the moment when you decided, here I am working at Rode, it's breaking records, it's so talked about, but identifying within yourself that you were ready for a change and that you wanted to start something new?

31:12Melanie Bender:You know, I think some roles are an amazing short-term fit and some roles are an amazing long-term fit. And I had the joy in the short term, but I knew it wasn't the long term. I don't think I knew exactly what would happen next. It was too much of a always-on role to be able to think about future while I was in it. But it was almost immediately after stepping out that I had a conversation with my now co-founders, with Joe and Greg. they told me that you know melanie they've been thinking and they think that i should have a brand and it really took these people that i respect and admire and adore putting it out there like that i think for me to fully consider that as a possibility for myself if i'm honest with myself i always wanted that and it was when i let myself really consider it that became clear that i want to do it for myself i want to do it on my own terms and i want to do it behind my own vision.

32:15Did you know it would be fragrance?

32:17Melanie Bender:I approached it very openly. Like as with all things, I didn't have the answer. I had the question. Back to the big question again. Life is just a series of questions. But I considered different territories to me that were interesting, that had commercial opportunities. Fragrance very quickly became the one that drew me in. And honestly, I was tired of talking about how people look. And where I felt really drawn to was the idea of feeling. And fragrance is the one category in beauty that you put on for how it makes you feel. It's still a category that I knew well. It's the same, you know, supply chain.

32:56Melanie Bender:It's the same consumer. It's the same retailers. But to me, there was potential there to do something that felt deeper that really spoke to me. And that, to me, became this interesting cultural opportunity. I know I was seeking deeper feeling and meaning and belonging. And I thought that other people were too. And that became that interesting jumping off point of what does it mean to build a modern fragrance brand? What does it mean to build a brand that, you know, we're not tied to a luxury house. We're not a licensing deal. Most fragrance brands are. It's a fragrance brand built from the ground up.

33:33Melanie Bender:It's a brand built around soul and meaning. It's a brand built around intention and this idea of contributing to culture. So one of my favorite books that I ask all of our beauty team to read is called A Perfect Scent. And it's by Chandler Burr, the former New York Times fragrance critic. And there was so much that I learned just from reading that about the fragrance world and the complexities of it and how gatekeepy it is. It's really a very closed world. So how did you start to learn about the world of fragrance and what did you need to educate yourself to even get to a place where you could think about creating fragrance?

34:17Melanie Bender:I mean, it was an entirely new category to me. And the fact that I didn't know a lot about fragrance, I didn't know a lot about how do you brief it, how do you think about it, that was exciting to me. You know, I was fortunate at this point in my career and with my two co-founders, Joe and Greg, who were the founders of Youth to the People, we had access. That was an advantage that we had. So we were able to get into the room with the best fragrance developers, the best noses. We were able to build relationships with, you know, the top creators in fragrance who were really driving that forward.

34:51Melanie Bender:so there was the opportunity of course for individual learning and to think about my relationship with fragrance and what stories and feelings of my life would I bottle if I could which is the genesis for a number of cents but also being able to learn from the best of the best and you know it's never been about a cookie cutter strategy and how do I do the same thing as someone else but how do I intake all of it how do I intake what I'm seeing and feeling but also the knowledge that other amazing people have amassed? And how do I use that to piece together my own way forward? So talk to me about the juice.

35:25How did you come up with the four launch fragrances?

35:30Melanie Bender:Well, I briefed probably 12 different fragrances. Oh, goodness. Yeah. What was fun is it was so different than briefing like a moisturizer, so different than briefing a cosmetic, which was kind of one way to do it. You give them the shade, you give them the benefits, you give them the key ingredients and they go. But with fragrance, how do you brief an invisible product? How do you brief something that each person is going to interpret differently? And so for me, I started with a feeling and identified, okay, what are 12 different feelings that I could see as a fragrance? I could see as something that I want to live in.

36:03Melanie Bender:How do I communicate those feelings? And that was what led me to pulling images and colors. It led me to attaching poetry to each of these feelings to express what they mean to me. And I thought about some of the keynotes, but really that's where I left a lot of openness for our noses, our perfumers to think about that part with me. I wanted to set the tone and say what these fragrances represent, but I wanted them to really use what they do best to help bring them to life. So it was this beautiful kind of dance of a briefing and development process, which I now know in retrospect is very unusual.

36:40Melanie Bender:Like most brands, they tend to come in and say, hey, we want it to be like this fragrance with these notes. It's a lot more prescriptive versus let's bottle a feeling. But I was always excited about approaching it differently, approaching it with feeling and with meaning. And from an original point of view. Right. There was no point in me doing it if it wasn't going to be original. There was absolutely no point. And from the very beginning of working at this brand, I knew I didn't need to do it. I knew that I could continue having an amazing career operating other people's brands if that ended up being right.

37:13Melanie Bender:And I only would keep going down this path of my own brand if I couldn't not do it, if it became so enthralling and meaningful to me that I couldn't imagine any other future, any other path forward. So that was my bar to set with everything. Do I love how this is coming together? Does it feel like the world needs it? And that was the bar that I set with our fragrances. Do they feel different? Do they immediately evoke something and pull you somewhere? But also, do they pull something out of you? I didn't want to be photorealistic, which has been a big trend in fragrance over the last few years of telling people this is exactly what it smells like.

37:52Melanie Bender:It's a peach and you will smell like a peach. It's so literal. Hey, like that's an amazing thing for someone. But for me, I was much more interested in starting a sentence and inviting the wearer to finish it and not telling you exactly what to think and what to imagine, but sharing an idea that you can help me complete. It's why your fragrance names have these kind of non-specific names like Sublimity and Somewhere But Nowhere, because I want to invite you into this feeling. But most of all, I want you to fill in exactly what it means to you. So I've been writing about fragrance for the vast majority of my career.

38:29And I have to say, and this is ripping off a phrase from someone smarter than myself, that writing about fragrance is like dancing about architecture. It's incredibly difficult. How do you explain a scent? How do you convey that? How do you market it? How do you paint the picture, especially if you're doing it digitally.

38:52Melanie Bender:I completely agree with that. But that also means that there's no wrong way to do it. And to me, that was really exciting. Fragrance almost more than any other category in beauty, it's very kind of neatly packaged just to how you develop a fragrance, how you talk about it, how you market it. You put a celebrity on a horse on the beach. You put that picture on a billboard. You're good to go. It can be parodied so easily because we all know what the tropes are, right? Yeah. And hey, like they do it because it works. But when I thought about culture and what are the brands that are moving culture forward, the Rhodes, but also the Moumous, the Loeves, they have such a representation of humanity and the grit of everyday life, the texture of it, the richness.

39:36Melanie Bender:And I felt like it was missing from fragrance. And this is this category. The product's invisible. And also the product is different on every person who wears it. Exactly. And so like, it's actually the most non-specific category and message. It was this opportunity to catch a feeling and hold it in my hands and share it with people in a way that just wasn't being done. I tried experimenting. Here are all the different ways that I communicate what this fragrance means to me. And I knew that they were relevant to me. I didn't know if they would be relevant to other people, but I started with, okay, what do I love?

40:10Melanie Bender:What do I love talking about? How do I love building this world? What do I think should be true about this world or fragrances that I'm creating? And then once I got that built out enough, it was inviting people into it and seeing what are they drawn to? Do they love the same things I love? What resonates with them? You know, what doesn't? And I was kind of magically astounded by people love the poetry. They love the questions. They love this kind of abstract scene that they could place themselves into. but that also invited them to bring their own meaning. And one of the fragrances that I think people connected with most was Sublimity.

40:47Can you walk us through the four launch fragrances and whatever description you would like to give our audience to pique their interest?

40:57Melanie Bender:I would love that. Sublimity is the very first fragrance that I started working on. and as I was developing feelings and fragrances, I knew that one that I had to bottle was the feeling of growing up in Hawaii. It's a sheer solar musk. It's a solar scent that draws from the white florals, the langling blossom, the coconut nectar, the smell of warm skin. It's a fragrance that I think really invites people to the spirit of being young, the spirit of being on a beach, but in a way that also lets them kind of fill in the details. I love it. Somewhere but nowhere is our Spice Creamy Wood. And it started as this ode to Americana, which has such grit to it, such individualism.

41:42Melanie Bender:But there's also such a grace to it. It's a wood scent that's focused around American cedarwood, this rich, soulful note. It has these spice notes of cardamom seeds and carrot that just kind of sits right at the tip of your nose. But it's also wrapped in this soft creaminess from vanilla cream. And that makes it either feminine or masculine and kind of neither somewhere but nowhere. Next, we have Lovely and a Little Twisted, which is our candied floral milk. Lovely and a Little Twisted started around this idea of like decadent discordance, but it's stuck through the looking glass. It's never quite clear.

42:20Melanie Bender:You can never quite get it to sit still. and we created this sense of these polar worlds of this discordant scent by bringing together two completely unrelated fragrances the first is this delicious gourmand of rose milk and candied pistachio it's like so delicious that you want to eat it we brought that together with this aromatic side it's resinous it is amber it is patchouli it is oud the sides are not really meant to be together. And what ends up happening is it holds you in the middle in a way that's warm and inviting, but also just a little bit strange. It's lovely. And then finally, we have Disfruta, which is our smoky cocktail citrus.

43:02Melanie Bender:It's a good time in a bottle. It's the knowledge that the best moments in life are the right people, the right place, and the right drink flowing. And so we made Disfruta like you would a cocktail. And it brings the sense of celebration of the opening of a party. of those days that go into night and they're gone in an instant, but you know, you know, it was good. You know, it was the best times of your life. And those are our four scents that take you somewhere. What a treat. Talk to me about the beautiful sculptural bottles because what you've done is so incredible. Yeah. I mean, the design language and design expression has always been really, really important to me.

43:46Melanie Bender:And I was so excited about the bottle being this manifestation of not just the brand, but of the fragrances. And for me, what felt really important is the bottle as this object of art that conveys luxury and the intention that went into it. It was a very long process. I think we went through probably 50 different explorations on forms. Well, that's what happens when you don't pick something that's already on the shelf, right? Yes. It's a fully custom component, custom, top, custom, bottom, but it felt so important for what I wanted this brand to convey. And where I ended up finding the inspiration was the ability of something to kind of defy the laws of physics, to communicate something that bends reality a little bit.

44:33Melanie Bender:That felt really fascinating to me for the brand as a whole. So the other thing that I think is so brilliant is the fact that Sephora came on board pre-launch as well. And so like you debuted at Sephora. Walk me through that distribution piece of it, because so many founders build with the hope of getting in Sephora at some point in time. You had such great success there so early. What was that like? How did you land that? What was that backstory? Yeah. You know, like I said, I wasn't going to force this brand. I was only going to do it if I felt that I could create something that I really, really loved.

45:15Melanie Bender:And I was honest with myself about what advantages do I bring and what do I not bring? I knew that to create something at the scale that I wanted to be able to invest in the fragrances, in the packaging, in the brand that I wanted, I would have to be able to build scale through other channels. And so the retail component became really, really important to that. And Sephora is such a group that I've respected with how they build brands. There are many retailers out there. There are a few that actually understand brand. And that was something that they are so excellent at. So they very quickly became a dream partner for us.

45:51Melanie Bender:We wanted to really develop the brand fully as we thought it should be before we showed it to anyone. We developed the brand, the fragrances, you know, really all of it. And then, you know, we took it to Sephora. We were fortunate that through Joe and Greg, they had really strong relationships with the team there. So we could get ourselves in the door. And I distinctly remember going into that meeting and we had met up beforehand. And I remember saying, you know, hey, like, I don't have any idea if they're going to like it, but I fucking love it. And that was enough for me. You know, honestly, one of the biggest fears that I had about doing my own brand was that the brands that I had done for other people were so iconic.

46:31Melanie Bender:They were so great. What if the one that I do for myself doesn't stand up? What if it's just not as good? And that was a very real possibility. But the personal is universal and you made something personal. I mean, I feel like TV has taught us that like the more personal the story, the more people that connect with it.

46:56So I mean, it's not always obvious, but it seems like if you're making something and you feel passionate about and you've done this so many times before, why wouldn't they? Melanie, of course, everyone's going to love it.

47:07Melanie Bender:I wish that you had been in my head like two years ago, but it led me down the logic of I can't control what other people like. I can't control what other people say. The only thing that I can control is making something that I love. And so for me, with this opportunity that I have at this point in my life, that will be the one thing that I create for. My goal is to create something that I love. And I had enough trust in myself and my brand work that, okay, I think I'm pretty good at this. But that had to be enough for me. I knew that once I introduced, okay, like, but I want it to be something that will do well in Sephora or I want it to be something that could be like this other fragrance.

47:48Melanie Bender:That just got too convoluted. So I decided I'm just going to focus on making something that I love. Going into the room with them, they understood it immediately. I think 10 minutes into the conversation, they said, when would you be ready to launch? And from there, it became clear that it's the right brand at the right time with the right partner. So launch was just like a minute ago. So it's a very young business. But what is the feedback that you've received so far? What are your hopes for the upcoming year? What are you looking forward to building most? The feedback has been just so wonderfully surreal.

48:28Melanie Bender:We took a lot of different choices. We've done things very, very differently in terms of how we set ourselves up as a brand, how we talk, how we express. And the reaction to that has just been so cool to see people really loving this world that we've created, this world that's big and beautiful, but it's a little bit bent. It's a little bit broken. That's the lore world. What's next for us is just really continuing to focus on building with our North Star as a feeling, building with this idea of humanity and culture and story at our center. There's a lot of certainty in who wears a brand and in how we communicated our fragrances.

49:13It looks and feels very different than any of the other brands out there, but I love

49:18Melanie Bender:it. And it's exciting to be 58 days into it and know that we're doing it right. Not know where every single decision will lead, not know like, what is this going to look like in two years or five years and 10 years, but know that we're on the right path, creating something that really means something to people. And I would just like to point out that if you are inspired by this and you want to try everything. The price point is very reasonable in the grand scheme of things for both a work of art in your hand and on your skin. And also I love that you have a fragrance discovery set. Yes. So you can try all of them.

49:54Melanie Bender:You have to explore. We have our discovery set at Lord Up World. We have our little everything set. So if you want a 10 a mil of everything. And yeah, my goal with thinking about the price point was not being able to have just one fragrance, but build a wardrobe. Build a wardrobe of moods, of styles. Change out your scent like you do an amazing jacket because that's what scent has the potential to be. In an instant, it changes how you look at yourself, how you feel about the world, how you express yourself. I love it. Okay, so we have three final questions that I ask all of our guests. The first one is about mistakes because we all make them in the course of our career, but we don't always talk about them.

50:35We tend to give the highlight reel. So I'm hoping that you can tell me about a mistake that you've made at any point in your career and what you've learned from it.

50:47Melanie Bender:Yes. Oh my gosh. Like so many mistakes. I think one of my biggest mistakes that I've really tried to learn from is being afraid of not knowing the answers to everything, a feeling like I need to have everything figured out. If I'm going into a meeting, I want to anticipate the 10 questions that they're going to ask, and I already want to know the answers to that. And I think that comes from a good place of wanting to be prepared and of taking the opportunity to succeed as being something that's really important. But it ends up completely shutting down the opportunity for learning, the opportunity to listen and to understand the other person's perspective.

51:29Melanie Bender:And now looking back, like I see how much I had to learn from my COO partners, from our board, from, you know, all the incredible folks that I got to learn from. And I think that holding that spirit of openness, of not needing to have everything figured out is so critical for being able to get the most of the learnings that are around you. So a lot of the folks who listen to this podcast are in their first lives and they know that they want to make a pivot or a switch Maybe it's a big leap Maybe it's staying in the same industry, but just doing something else But they're scared and they're nervous about making that change as someone who has made pivots in her own career What advice would you give someone who's standing there on the precipice?

52:17Thinking about making that positive leap forward but just hasn't done it quite yet Yeah.

52:22Melanie Bender:I mean, to me, the biggest piece of advice is that the perfect job does not exist. It's not about waiting until, all right, the title lines up with the compensation, lines up with what I'm doing at this brand that I want. No. I think so much of life is just getting one step closer and never taking things just for what they are, but finding the opportunity, finding what they could be. That happened a couple times in my career of the job that I accepted ended up being just the starting point. And I was able to create these bridges into the careers that I wanted. They took 15 years to get to my, quote, dream job.

53:03Melanie Bender:It was always just getting one step closer and always taking the opportunity and seeing what I could make it into. And that was how I was able to get experience in things that I hadn't done before. That was how I was able to bridge the gap with having a background that was very odd, that was very different for what I wanted to do, but also, you know, being able to go at a speed that in retrospect, hey, like I got to progress these things really quickly. and that was because I was constantly looking for how do I bring myself one step closer to these things that I really want to do. Last question.

53:38Favorite question, which is, if you could get into a time machine and go back in time and speak with your younger self and give your younger self some career advice at any point, what would you say?

53:50Melanie Bender:Oh my gosh, just chill and believe in yourself. Yeah, you have very little chill, my friend. I don't have the chill. I have a lot more of it now, honestly. I like that about you for the record, though. But like, you're intense. And I think that's great. And it's only because you care. I care. I deeply care. And I have such a passion for what I get to do. And I think it comes from I didn't get to do this starting out. I had to just be so persistent. And I knew that I could not stay in this field of environmental planning. I could not be writing these 1 ,000-page reports. I knew I had to move forward, but I didn't believe in where it would take me.

54:33Melanie Bender:And looking back, what a beautiful journey. It's given me where I am now such trust in myself, but kind of the serendipity of the universe that things will connect in a way that makes sense. It might not make sense in the moment. It will make sense, you know, kind of with time. And I didn't have that trust in that security that I do now. And I don't know that it would have ended up any differently, but it would have been a kinder journey early on had I had more of that. I feel you on that. Melanie, thank you so much for your time today. This was an honor, a pleasure, a delight. I have loved knowing and working with you.

55:17This is such a treat for me. I wish you all the continued success with Lore and with everything that you're doing. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to sit down with me today.

55:28Melanie Bender:It has been my distinct joy. Thank you so much for letting me share my story, but also thank you, Hillary, for the role that you played in it. Very small, but a big cheerleader. I can say that.

55:46That was the founder and CEO of Lore, Melanie Bender. For more inspiring interviews with women like Melanie, head on over to secondlifepod.com, where we have so many more for you to peruse. If you like today's show, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to rate and review us. We love seeing you spread the word on social. and now you can tag us in your posts. We are at Second Life Pod on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. We always want to know who you're interested in hearing from on the show. So send in your requests to hello at secondlifepod.com or you can DM us on Instagram.

56:26I'm at Hilary Kerr. The show is at Second Life Pod. Our DMs are always open. I'm Hilary Kerr, and you've been listening to Second Life. This episode was produced by Hilary Kerr, Summer Hammeris, and Natalie Thurman. Our production assistant is Raven Yamamoto. Our audio engineers are at Treehouse Recording in Los Angeles, California, and our music is by Jonathan Leahy.