How I disrupted a $671 billion industry from my bedroom

0:00Okay, Marc, welcome to the show. So you are someone who is disrupting massively multi-billion dollar industry giants, people like Nivea, like L 'Oreal, and you're doing it all with Horace. So we want to get you just to introduce yourself. Firstly, tell us a little bit about yourself and why this brand started. So I'm Marc, Brian Terlet, Brion Terlet, if I say it in a French way, I'm like CEO and co-founder of Horace, which is a brand we started with my co-founder, Kim Mazilil, eight years ago. and the idea of was we like can we do a brand that actually like speak to us in a broader way speak to our family speak to our friend because i mean it was and it still is very very cliche i mean it's still like a very muscular guy it's still like bright orange like huge form and stuff things that smell like the 80s and it was like can i have like a good looking product that just works well when you talk to me in a simple way and you have people that look like me my friends and everyone in the ads and not just only david beckham because it's like i'm not an athlete i don't have like a nutritionist an esthetician so like i'm a regular guy and so we started with that and it just really took off you worked in marketing and journalism when you first started right so how do you think that outside perspective helped you spot what other people were missing that's a very very good question i mean one of the things that helped us a lot kim and myself is that we are outsider we didn't come from like cosmetics or fragrance at all um i worked so yeah i was a journalist at the very beginning of my careers and i moved into marketing i work mostly in fashion and fashion and beauty is the same stuff even though like they don't operate the same way i mean you buy it because you want to look good it's the same goal you have in mind and it's sort of and we also had the chance of being advanced so the skate company they are in 2008 to 10 when it really like took off in europe and i sort of created the like digital environment for them so like e-commerce email digital social media and stuff when it was like basically myspace and facebook and so i i understand how much you needed content and you needed to like and and And social media would also allow us to have like a direct relationship, which is something when you're L 'Oreal, when you're by your stuff with Nivea Forman, you don't do because your client is like a supermarket.

2:35So having this age of being able to create the connection directly, and having in mind that content is really the most important thing. I mean, it has to fit the brand. So it's of course, and the product, but it's a lot about content. We sort of channel into that and we just created like the best brand, best product with just the best content. And I was reading before that, and you might update us, but in 2023, you had 21 % of the French market. In men's skincare. In men's skincare. And since 2023? I mean, I don't have the 2024 numbers yet, but let's just say 41 but as in are you are you sitting there thinking oh yeah are we gonna directionally oh yeah directionally we're going to be somewhere between 25 and 30 wow and so it means that we will almost be double the number two we are there would be an assumption as well i think that uh the french the men's french market you know maybe along with italian and then maybe english but probably not would be the premium market for the space in general nope oh skincare for men is bigger in the UK than it is in France, but like twice bigger.

3:52But we use more fragrance in France because, you know, we don't bath and stuff. So we're dirty. My favorite looks is perfume. It's set in Paris. And, uh, but yeah, I mean, it's basically France and the UK are, you know, in and out the same type of market. And, uh, yeah, we're number one in men's skincare. We're number four in men's hair. And we will stay number four in men's hair, but we're going to close the edge with American crew in France. So it's I mean, we are sort of and also to add like overall, like in a man's beauty and fragrance in France, we are not in the top ten. So and this like 2024, we will be bigger than L 'Oréal Man Xperts closing the gap with an IVF for men and, you know, starting to be to be very close with just bigger fragrance that just only sell fragrance.

4:43So it's sort of a it's kind of crazy because i would have never expected that in my life i mean one of my questions to you is i suppose retrospectively now we're sitting here in 2024 looking at men's grooming and so forth i think it's easy now to say that you can see it however you know you started eight years ago i worked like we were talking about before i worked in i helped a men's fragrance company scale massively uh but at the time we were almost shocked at how fast it was growing And so when you started, were you looking at this as a business start? Or were you saying this could be a massive business?

5:21Like what was the opportunity at the time for you? I mean, we wanted to be like a massive business. Because I mean, when you're in the main space, like the market is so narrow that you're either big or you're dead. Like the market is not big enough for you to be niche. In fragrance, you can actually be. but if you're like grooming and fragrance you cannot be niche in men it doesn't like it's too small so by just the idea of like we want to do that the only ambition that was possible was like we have to be big because if we don't i mean like we'll die at some point that's because it's just it's not possible to fight what what did big look like then big was like the idea was like how we can be like the favorite men's brand in the world.

6:10It was always like the ambitions, like we, we want to be that and we wanted to be that step-by-step. So it's then first in France, then it's the UK, then the US. It's not about like taking over everywhere because regulation in cosmetic and firearms is so big. You cannot just, it's not like a white t-shirt. You cannot like set it everywhere. You have to enter each regulations, like let's do it step by step. But the idea was like, yeah, we can do that and we can also do that because it was and it still is very very lame it's an industry that i mean if you're a man advertising is still about like making sure that if you put like a moisturizer on your face you're still man enough and this sort of whereas like no that's that's okay like i'm past that we are all past that it's no longer the question it's just like i'm yeah i use like a face wash i clean myself which is pretty normal and i use the most because my skin is tight and if i don't do that it's like annoying and but it's just it was like there was like a huge space for us it's interesting as you mentioned in passing earlier david beckham actually but in fairness he has done a massive massive global job yeah for men like the old thing was very much like hey if you're a cool good looking tough guy you just roll out of bed and live your life and you go mountaineering and all this shit you don't do that stuff and he's probably the first really aspirational man that other men look up to and was like this guy is exactly he's like one of the world's best footballers at the time and played in the world's best teams and then had this celebrity lifestyle after where he became a global icon and was probably the first global icon in that space and he did it all while saying i this is all about taking care of myself like the whole positioning was around being a man who looks after yourself it's quite interesting it's the first person to really do that yeah it was the first one to be like really open about it because i mean if you think about like with pride yeah yeah frank sinhala frank sinhala was wearing a toupee he never said he was wearing a toupee yeah but that's like but also like jokes aside look at other icons that people look up to like even you know french ones like eric cantona who people in the uk were obsessed with like kid not putting on face screen no no no no the opposite kind of guy no no no the kind of probably yeah yeah i mean it was the time of the gala girls and stuff so it was like very and and bacham was like you can actually take care of yourself and doesn't change who you are yeah which was like a huge thing i mean i was like so i'm 38 i mean it means like it was when i was yeah late in high school and stuff and it has like a shift in the mind it's like okay i can actually take care of myself but at some point we also need to past be like beyond david beckham because it cannot be the only model you show to men it cannot be just one very muscular guy young rich white cisgender at some point you need to have like a broader vision and it was like a very different because at the same time you are like beckham saying like i can take care of myself that's okay you had like dove saying like this is real beauty and you were showing it advertising like women of all ages color morphologies which was so fucking different and now you have like rihanna with fenty and stuff but if you still look at advertising for men in beauty it's still like very much like henry cavill you know like a good looking actor usually white it's not even you know it's still very the same fucking uh a skincare range terry henry would have been good yeah that's right people would have bought it any chance of uh horace and thierry henry collab is he too old no the show is so if you listen to the show yeah thierry i'm up for it i love you man he would be great yeah yeah he has great skin yeah exactly that's the thing yeah he's good looking for himself yeah totally um do you do you find it different advertising heights to men and women well maybe you can maybe give us some context on heights yeah so i run i run a consumer company as well consumer subscription company called heights we make supplements um for brain and gut health 60 percent of our audience the fucking everywhere i mean he puts them everywhere 60 percent of our customer base is is female um so it's that's a that's a split right so it's very it's pretty much 50 50 at 60 percent um to be honest with you no as in yeah same same um in supplements the way it works is the majority of the customers uh in a household right and in a household it's women okay and so when you start doing stuff for families you know women buy for their husbands and women buy for their kids and women women women so So you do think slightly more on the basis of, is a woman going to engage with this or disengage with this?

11:07So the language and all that kind of stuff needs to be consciously not overly masculine. That's the thing. And men will still buy it. The language in supplements and health doesn't need to be really probably for men to buy into it. They just need to understand that the science and it works and that stuff is fine. So it's a really interesting space. Whereas I think in some supplement categories, people really double down on being for bros. Yeah, I mean, if you do proteins only and stuff, it's usually like a plural language. Totally, totally. I don't think that's necessary, but I think it works.

11:39Yeah, I think it works, but it also opened up a space for a brand that doesn't talk that way. Totally. Which was exactly what happened to us. It's like, because you are so cliche in the way you talk about men, it opens up a space for a brand to talk differently. Yes, spot on. And it was, I mean, and the whole point is like, we were sure that there were actually more men that were open to being, you know, spoken to in a normal way and not in a cliche way. and it was like the bet was basically all that it's like we are at the moment in you know the life and the use of grooming product and fragrance that we no longer need to reassure men about their masculinity because they are using product and let's see about that basically yeah it's one of those things that once you start using product you literally can't get back yeah like how weird you feel afterwards not using product yeah because you feel that your skin is tight you feel like your hair is not as good you feel like you don't smell that good so you know yeah and and it's like yeah you don't you don't get back really i think there's also something in the in the men's space women have done a really good job of self-love and self-care and i think that feels uncomfortable for men to talk about yeah yeah yeah i mean that's men and women have like as many complexes i mean it's not a gender thing it's just the way that women talk about it in a different way it's cultural yeah and it's it's the feminism it's like it's about you feeling good in yourself not fitting in like certain archetypes of how you should be as a woman whereas men we don't we are still very much feel the pressure of like we have to fit in the archetype because i mean i say like i don't want to be david beckham but at the same time i like i'm i'm seen i'm healthy like i take care of myself i have like good skin i had like hair transplant so i i'm actually closer to like david beckham's and i am to someone that really don't care about that but it's just like having the flexibility and men and men we are not yet there but i think it's the role for us is also to help more men get there it's like it's you have acne that's okay you can take care of yourself and if you have this sometimes that's fine when the when the When the company launched originally, how well received was it?

13:59Like, did you have like immediate product market fit? We had, yeah. That was honestly still crazy to think about it because like it was never a struggle. It's like, so we started with skincare. Let's just stop the interview. I can't talk to people like this. No, no, no, no. I mean, I know that, but it's kind of crazy. I mean, it has been like, we didn't have like much question. the way the brand is now is the same as eight years ago. It hasn't changed. Like it's the same mission, same value, same branding. And we started with skincare because the good thing, there's two good things with skincare.

14:35It's first, it's sort of the most complicated category when you're a newbie. And most men are newbies. I am a newbie. So you don't know. So it's sort of, if there is a brand you trust that a good product, you're going to follow them. And the good thing about skincare is that but it sort of has an aura of all the like grooming category. And if your skincare products are good, your body care product is good. Your bead care is good. Your hair care is good. Well, if you come from deodorant and then you move to skincare, it's like, man, you're a deodorant brand. What are you selling to my face? And so we started with that and like skincare like took off really at the beginning.

15:12Can you give us like some numbers? Some context? That's a good. so yeah first production of product were like 2500 right and we presumably before you sold anything yeah yeah and we sold it in i'm not sure i think it was six months or something wow and then we just like moved to more and more and more and uh and it was yeah i mean it's it was still because it's not like a fashion brand where you can just print you know 50 t-shirts and you see like we we had to take the risk of having like 2 ,500 units per reference and we had two but rough on the cash yeah exactly it's like when i actually we need to raise money because we didn't have money or so you raised before you did yeah exactly i mean so even to be precise so I said and this is important in the stories like I don't come from fragrance and cosmetics and netherdough scheme so actually the company is 10 years old and the brand is 8 years old and the two year difference is like I thought I would be able to launch product in three months and when I came to the factory I said okay I want to do this cleanser and this moisturizer can it be ready for next September and it was May it's like yeah yeah September next year no no no transition no no no no way and so we had to sit down and taking the decision of like what do we do because i quit my job kim was still working like at that time in canada and he was like working basically overnight and this is your co-founder yeah my co-founder yeah and it was like what do we do and the idea was like okay we're gonna buy product wholesale build the brand so we is like had the branding at the content we had like one toothbrush that was a us because we We wanted people to realize that we could be a brand and not just like a retailer.

17:12And it took us, yeah. So two years after that, we launched the face cleanser, which is a purifying face cleanser and the mattifying face moisturizer, which should exist now. And they made up of 50 % of the sales right away. Wow. So it was like, okay, we're seeing it, it's working. And it was like a very interesting moment because we didn't want to start as a retailer. It was like never the point, but we took it as an opportunity to just learn about the category because we were able to, you know, buy deodorant, buy shampoos, like different products in skincare. And just like, you know, what do men buy?

17:51And, you know, how far do they go in terms of pricing and stuff? And this is how we realized that men were looking for like a way better deodorant than what they could have like in a supermarket because they were one of our best sellers was like a 20 euros dividend so it's like okay maybe there is something because you'll see if you're spending that much money it means something so before we talk more about i suppose the growth from 2500 products onwards like let's take a step back what were the big billion dollar menswear men's fragrance men's beauty brands getting wrong what was it that they were missing that allowed you to come in so strong Yeah, was it product or messaging?

18:31Both. It's really product and branding because, I mean, you buy in that category, you buy for product and branding. And so if you look at the product, it was, and the branding, everything was usually overcomplicated, which is the main thing about this industry. Beauty loves making things more complicated than they actually are. I mean, if you look at the name of a L 'Oreal Man Xperia product, it's not like a moisturizer. It's like a Hydra, Energetic, whatever, moisturizing stuff. Whereas our product is a mattifying face moisturizer. And it's still like bright orange or, you know, very like dated, you know, product packaging.

19:17And the messaging and the branding at the same time was very dated. I remember, for example, and it's very, very specific. it was like a biotherm advertising for men. And it was a woman applying moisturizer on the face of the men. And it was like, come on, come on. It's like, sounds nice. Come on. That guy's living a great life. It's like, never happened in my life. Will never happen in my life ever. And it was like, they were - If you even asked your wife, she'd be like, God, do it. Yeah, like - She's got so many fucking creams to put on herself. She hasn't got time. and it was still you know very again like cliche in a way in terms of physique in the way we talk and and we just we made it much simpler which was really the idea it's like the product needs to be simple the way we talk has to be simple the branding is simple but it still can be aspiring because you can be simple and neat which is the whole point of apple yeah so it was like it was just yeah basically really just over complicated and it still it still is honestly I mean, if you go to a like a supermarket and you look at most product, you don't understand what they do.

20:27And it's just it's a fucking shampoo. You've got this, you know, non-entrepreneurial family. You go to business school, you spot an opportunity. Beauty sucks. There's an opportunity for us to do it better. People listening will be like, OK, actually, you know, I've got my own version of this story. I had the same version of that story, too. you know for and it's a very typical start of an entrepreneur thing but you know for me i didn't know anything about supplements or how they got made or anything so you know when people ask me like what did you do i'm like well i mean there was a shitty trade show in the excel center that i had to go to and then i had to go to vienna and go to a trade show there and trade show because you don't know anyone in the industry right you just have to do the you break into an industry you have to just go meet people and learn the stuff and there is no other way of doing it because if you don't know anyone in the category and you have no contacts, you've got to go force your way in.

21:21What's your version of that? Like, how did you literally go, you know, make creams, understand how production works, like get to the first 2 ,500 order? Like, take us through the early days. Did the 2 ,500 sell through your website? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, like setting up a website. Yeah. Yeah, so how did you do that? But, I mean, one thing that is really important, I'm just side answering that. It's like when you're a men's brand, there is no wholesale opportunity. I mean, it's going back to like the most internet, most insult question. It's like you have to be DTC because the shelf is so little that no one will take you if you're not big.

22:01So we had to be DTC. It was like, just like that. And so I didn't know anything about cosmetics and fragrance at all. and but like i'm a huge nerd and i'm a huge book nerd so if i don't know something i can buy like dozens of books read them in like very short amount of time and being able to understand like 80 percent of height works in a very and even more than that in a very short amount of time so launching consumer men's skin care for dummies basically so yeah i actually i bought like books on Amazon about like you know how skin works how hair works how you know how you create cosmetics what is the role of like a conservative like of active ingredients you know how like why natural is more interesting than like synthetic and stuff like that so I read it all I started and I created the first formula on paper by myself and now I don't but I'll tell you It was just a little bit after a while.

23:09And the amazing thing as well is like, I can do that on my own, yes, but the amazing thing about starting like a cosmetic and fragrance brand in France, it's like we have the best talent, honestly. It's just, we have so many factories, so many great schools, so many great people that are very, very good at that. So I was able to find like a partner to like actually manufacture the product because it's an industrial stuff. It's not even manufactured, is we like machinery and it was easy because i mean there are so many factories in france you cannot and you have the cultural heritage yeah yeah exactly because i mean we have we have l 'oreal we have like the interparfum we have the lvmh i mean all the biggest cosmetics company are in france so you have like the network of it yeah it's actually amazing what you're saying it's making me realize you know you have all of that set up just not done well for men yeah yeah yeah So you have the talent, but not necessarily the application.

24:07Yeah, but because I mean, if men, because men is only 10 % of the market, why bother? I mean, if you're big, why bother about 10 % of the market? Yeah. And so I started like that. And the first employee we had, we've had is Elise, which is still, we're still part of the company. And she's the R &D director. And she started like as marketing intern, like a digital marketing intern. But this was not her thing. and she actually like a she had a double degree from like the best cosmetic and fragrance school in france and from one of like a very good business school and after six months of interning on digital marketing i said okay look i want you to stay but i want you to like take over product development because you know you have like a chemistry background that i don't have and i can do the first two product but then it's just like it's too complicated for me so i need someone that is able to talk in the same way that the factories talk to me because we will make sure that it goes way way faster that way that's amazing marketing intern now what a career yeah yeah it's also so interesting though i remember listening to a very in-depth story of lvmh um and you learn about you know what france has that's so unique is you know you were just mentioning like out of the top cosmetic uh you know an engineering school you like culturally as a country yeah you must be the only country that i know of that has these boutique but they're not boutique because they're large because it's the industry yeah the industry size is tens of billions so they are like mainstream in schools but around industry categories yeah you know how exports yeah how unbelievably interesting is that you just don't have anything like that in the uk no we're very different yeah no i mean that's that's interesting about like it's also a bit about luck you know because i didn't i never thought i would do like cosmetic and fragrance and i when i talk about kimla about the idea and say okay and he says let's do it like we didn't know or we didn't realize that it we were in the right country to actually do it yeah it's really at some point it just boils down to luck i mean you had to put yourself exactly it's like i have like literally so many other people could fortuna tattoo tattooed on my like my skin which is like it's a machiavel stuff so fortuna is like luck yeah in uh in latin and virtu is the aptitude of being able to seize luck which is something in the machiavel book and and it's i mean you need luck but you need also to be able to see luck and use it.

26:45But it was like, we have this thing that we can do better. And the luck was about having someone at the very beginning of our that was very good at product and saying like, you're better than me. That's fine. We're going to like, I'm going to take back some of the marketing you do and I'm going to give you back like product development. And it was like one of the best ideas like ever had, honestly. And that's one of the interesting things, like early founders slash CEOs stepping back from things. Often people will say it's so lucky this person was amazing. If you look at the other way, because you made that great decision, that person then grew and has grown for eight years and has become them because you made that decision.

27:31Luck is preparation meets opportunity. Exactly. So yeah, I mean, it sounds like, I mean, the one thing I think is fascinating, when you originally were speaking, I was like, did you launch in France? Cause you knew that the foundations were there, but no, because if you'd launched this in the UK. We could have launched this in Montreal, right? So that's that question. No, Montreal, no, because the market is so little. I mean, Canada is only 30 million. So it's really, really little. But I mean, we could have done it in the UK, we could have done it in France, but i i you don't i don't know if it would have worked in the same way because the network is not the same and the branding of being french yeah yeah yeah it's just you know yeah i mean in that category being french is like it's the thing and if you were in the uk you should move to france yeah yeah yeah i mean i probably like when you see how many like uk or even like swedish brands end up being produced in france and make sure that it's like made in france and blah blah blah blah it's it's a thing and i didn't things where yeah there's certain things where being made in britain is the best and certain things where being made in france is the best what's good for britain shoes like shoes man you have like the best shoe brand in the world yeah it's a good example i mean there's quite a few but like if you're in beauty cosmetics whatever is france yeah and fashion would be somewhere between italy france britain probably in that order yeah yeah you're right yeah and so obviously you went from dc and then you did break into being on the shelf and presumably because of the 10 rule replacing competitors how did that feel so we started 100 e-commerce and then we did like a first retail pop-up it was in september 2018 18 and in one month we'd made like 30k euros which was at that time like a third of like half of what we do online we're like okay this is like one thing if i'm able to do like half of the online business in one month in the store it means something so we worked a lot on finding a place which has taken a bit of time and we opened straight after the first um um lockdown in france and we arrived properly wholesale in i mean in a big world say was 2021 we started small doing small world saying at very early on because we were at mr porter uh we i assume that you know guys that because you're brit and good uh because i work with them for years because some people in france don't necessarily know mr porter but yeah so yeah exactly so we were at mr porter we were like in like good concept store and stuff but it's still like very low numbers and so we arrive in monoprix which is sort of a high-end supermarket a bit similar to wet rose uh slightly higher market and uh and it was weird to like see the brand for the first time in a supermarket because like it is sort of, okay, like this is real.

30:47And much like the store, I mean, with the store, you start like feeling this is real, because I mean, the first store we opened is in Le Marais in France. So we are, and we are nearby Fred Perry, Supreme, like a Chanel store, like Arc'teryx, Salomon. It's like, okay, this is - It feels like it's the right place and it feels like real, but being in the supermarket, it feels like you're no longer niche. like you play with the big guys and it was also weird because we actually didn't take any shelf at the very beginning and we still don't do that much at Monoprix we have our own furniture so we're sort of like we have like a huge orass tower full of orass product that is just nearby the men's shelf and we are the only brand that have like a proper like furniture in the store so it also means that the brands pops up way more in the in your eye and you're sort of like you're treated differently so in the eye of like like a chopper it's like oh you're not like spread out you're not like you know the brand that is spread out through you know deodorant and shaving and stuff like you have like all our ass at one place and it's uh anyways Yeah, it was, it's still amazing.

32:05I mean, I was with my mom at like a Monoprix like two or three weeks ago. And I was like, this is myself. And my mom was like straining up some stuff because like she's my mom. And it's still, yeah, it's weird. But the weirdest thing is honestly to see a guy at the airport or at the gym, like opening up his trolley tree bath because you have to do that at the airport or at the gym. And like a guy like takes out. do you like no i don't i see i'm thunder no i heard that recently i saw someone took a nice thing out and i was like i'm so tempted i'm so tempted but i didn't do it i bet you have well no i was with i was with my wife and she didn't want to yeah i was on my own i'm always i'm like you i'm always tempted but i feel like no i don't want to i don't want to be that guy have you ever done the sort of sneaky where you're like uh oh like i've just bought that what do you think get a little customer research no no no that's actually like a smart move that i'd never i'll do it um do you think the game rejected so much by retail has actually been an advantage to you yes yes yes because we we we had to build a very very strong brand because if you go to world sale you can sort you can rely on people talking about you and pushing you whereas you know we are on your dtc you have like to have like the strongest brand possible and it sort of allows you when you go wholesale to have like a niche in the negotiations like i don't rely on you like if you shut down that's okay my business will go on and so you don't have all you have like a stronger brand and you also have like a stronger position in the negotiation because you don't rely also they're cooler because they have you yeah exactly they need me more than i need them and it's changed the dynamic like a lot and i'm i'm very like that in world say it's like my mindset is like, I don't need you.

34:00I need them at some point because I mean, I will, I cannot have, like I'm a men's brand. I cannot have like a store in every place in the world. So you need wholesale at some point. And some wholesale are very good at building reputation image. Mr. Porter is, for example. So this is why we wanted to go there. But it's different when you actually like rely on them and you shut down if they sort of strike you out. and there are so many stories in like consumer goods. I mean, whereas cosmetics or, you know, food or fashion where like a huge wholesaler shuts you down and like you die right away. Yeah.

34:38And so being DTC creates this sense of autonomy that is honestly very, that helps you like, helps me a lot like sleep well at night. Yeah. I used to do the digital marketing for Nest Porter and Mr Porter. and you did see a lot of brands kind of come and go. But I suppose I was sitting there thinking, why aren't the big brands just completely copying you now? Why are they releasing their own niche branded products to take you on? So this is something I learned as well by going in this industry. It's like the big groups don't launch brands. They buy them. They buy them. So they are very good at like globally scaling a brand.

35:23so take it from you know being big in five countries and making it available everywhere and they are good at mergers and acquisition basically so they don't they don't compete they don't it's not like they don't think about competing it's not like this is so do you know a lot of other brands now competing with you that i suppose now could be acquired in the future no no no the amazing thing is like we are very alone in our spaces and this is something i still don't really realize it's like how come we are very alone i mean you are you see brands as you say that come and go but like nothing really happens i mean you have harry's in the us and in the uk which is like huge yeah but it's a shaving stuff yeah and that's clever brand and yeah yeah they are like like honestly yeah wow one of the best and but It's shaving and whereas us, we are a lot of, you know, skincare, fragrance, and I mean, we're big in deodorant in hair care as well, but it's a different stuff.

36:25And, but now we see that they are sort of copying, copying, copying us? Copying. Copying us, yeah, sorry, copying us in certain products. For example, Garnier really some serums that have like this almost the same branding, same ingredients, same way, same name for the product. so like this sort of i know that like a brand called veleda which is like a huge german natural brand has like a horace plan because they want to like they want to make sure that we sort of don't compete but the amazing thing with big groups especially in cosmetic because they are really really huge like when they think it's time to compete you have like two or three years ahead of you yeah so the idea is like you want to compete now but like you just maintain my yeah and i suppose that is a good question right which is you know how do you keep your disruptor mindset you know now you're number one we're number one in skincare which is just one category so yes there are still other category where we can be number one so like the mindset is still here because yeah okay skincare is fine it's like a huge step i'm saying that like it's nothing but like a huge step but it's a huge step in one category in one country so it's just very very little i mean the idea is like how we can do that in other categories and the focus the main focus for us is fragrance and in other countries which is where the main focus is the uk so and when we will be like you know very big in both and both countries and both categories now yes mindset will maybe change a little bit because we will have to think in a different way but even i i'm even not sure what i'm saying because i mean europe is so tiny i mean we i mean france and britain and germany we feel we are big but we are very very tiny it's like we are nowhere compared to like china and the us or brazil so and india so it's like i still i see i will have that feeling because I mean, I realize that we are just still very, very little, but it's different to convey the feeling to the team because I mean, the team and the people that join now feel that they are joining like a much bigger company.

38:43And they are true. Like we are 150 now and 150 people. Yeah. We are 150 and including the stores. So you feel like you are part of like a bigger thing, but we need to make sure that we keep the culture of like still being bold and you know going above and beyond and it's this is actually the tough part the tough part is not my mindset it's how we can make sure that we have the same company mindset yeah i'm going to ask you the question that gets asked to me all the time when you're going to break into china i mean i don't i don't No, we sort of soft launch a couple of months ago. But what I call a soft launch is, you know, in China, you can, there is this part of the business called cross border, where you don't need as a cosmetic brand or fragrance brand to...

39:43Be fully localized. Exactly, thank you. And, but it's still like very small fraction of the market. So we are there and we'll see how far it takes us. And yet we need to realize that this is like a very different culture. And I'm not saying that in a way of actually like the way people consume, because I mean, you go there, I go there. It's like, we dress the same. We look the same. Like everybody has jeans and Air Force One. It's like, but it's not the same social media. It's not the same e-commerce platform. or it's not the same way of doing the business totally. And whereas when you move to France from the UK, I mean, it's still Instagram, you can still have your own website.

40:30Yeah. Boots is similar to like a pharmacy or a monoprint France. You still are in the same paradigm of business. Whereas like China is just completely different. I was just saying earlier, like I obviously worked with Creed for basically eight years from niche to mainstream. And one of the things we did in the last few years was we helped them localize their business to go into China. And then we as a business, we were called Verb. We built a business called Verb China specifically to help brands do it because it was such an opportunity. And obviously it's so much harder than just going into China, right?

41:08Like it's a whole different landscape. But I think for me thinking about you and China, I want to get a sense of your scale. And I want to get a sense of the story. So you raised money originally. You then pretty much scaled out the gate and you've been year on year growing at what seems like an unbelievable pace. How much did you raise? Oh, we raised 25 million. Right. So 25 million to do 25 million. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, just not at once, like sell your homes. and uh and we took the business from yeah from zero to 25 million in eight years wow that's incredible and how big can it go now because i suppose i mean we can be like a 500 million brand basically 500 million revenue revenue uh because i mean if you look at because you're working out the percentage of the market and how much yeah yeah and if i say i mean if you look at some of the biggest brands this is actually what they do so and one of our huge edge is like we are in skincare and fragrance which are like the highest value categories so it would allow us to even like stretch a bit further on that wow and so i think for entrepreneurs watching um I think the most interesting thing about you is you weren't from fragrance, you weren't from beauty.

42:40You sat down with a business partner who was a friend and you said, let's conquer a market. So like, what would your advice be to young, not necessarily young, but new entrepreneurs looking to disrupt a market? Like, how do you do that? Know your audience. First main thing is like, know the people you are selling the products to or the service. It's like, because at the end of the day, it's the clients that makes you. So you have to know, you know, why they buy and why they quit, why they come back, why they are into. And both in terms of product and branding, it's really like know your audience and be focused.

43:23So say no a lot. Like I'm known to say no, like a lot. like I'm the one that say no in between the both of us I'm the one that says no but is that like no to new categories new products no to yeah no to new categories new product you know new wholesaler sounding very Parisian right now and but but the thing is the thing is like it's easy to sort of fall into the trap of saying yes to all the opportunities and being focused is also saying no to like, when you start as a, as like an entrepreneur and we are a scale up now, we were a startup. It's like people wanna talk to you. So you're invited to stuff, et cetera.

44:15And being focused is like, no, like what is important is my job, my family, my friends. That's it to me. I'm not saying that's for everyone, but being focused is also like being able to think like, no I don't need to go to that conference like I know it's a startup thing but like it will not change my business just like does this thing will change for my consumer and this is why like we stay away from like corporate press for so long like yeah you're like a cosmetic industry mag but like my client like it doesn't read that this is can I just second this this is exceptional advice I 100 % do the same thing at Heights and I think this is a point that people don't do enough you do get invited to everything there is a time and a place actually when you're starting up it can be very helpful when you're starting up it can be very helpful because you maybe need to meet those investors and you maybe do need to meet those people that can maybe help you with that thing but you also have to really figure out when like you said is this going to help me sell to customers no and you get invited to all these talks and in the world that you're in for example Chris, you doing a talk can be massively valuable in so many ways.

45:30You can get customers for the Creator Accelerator and you're in B2B. Not for the audience, but yeah. No, no, but genuinely, for doing talks, the right people in the right audience, they might be absolutely perfect for you. In consumer stages that we're at, almost 99.9 % of them are totally a waste of time, even the ones that sound like the best ones, because they are just never going to move the needle for your revenue your customer base your customers are rarely in those rooms exactly it's so good you're like 15 million and you're like four years in five years in or something four years i mean similar things so how do you how do you market to men like where are men buying from and i imagine probably it's very similar to you i bet the retention on both your products is phenomenal yeah retention is good so the point is we to acquire and acquire at a good price because I mean, you can acquire a bad price and then like the lifetime value will be bad.

46:22And you can acquire cheap customers. And that's a way to find it. Yeah, of course. Of course. That's a very good point. And I mean, the insight was very easy. Men do not look for cosmetics or fragrance. So you have to interrupt them. Where do you interrupt them? On social media. Because I don't know. At the beginning, I didn't have money to do TV. So I mean, the only way to interrupt was like paid social. and because it was, I mean, it was, as I say, I come from the digital marketing background. So from fashion, journalism, digital marketing. And I was just like looking, you know, at Google trends.

46:57I was looking at the volume of search of, you know, moisturizer for men. It was like so low. It was so low. And I was like, okay, so they don't really care what they buy, but they want something better and they don't look for it. So the only way to reach them is through social media. So we sort of build the team around creating content and, you know, amplifying content and just to interrupt people. So every time I have, like I meet people and they're like, I've seen you on YouTube and I've seen you everywhere. I see you a bit too much sometimes. And like, that's the whole point. It's like, because if I don't do that, you will never look for us.

47:40and that means you're my potential customer yeah yeah totally and do and do men i i'm i'm only thinking about how i buy things but do men like to buy things bundled like is it has it been easy for you to move from skincare to fragrance for example are the same customers because i know with you for example they've moved from your first vitals products to your new products quite quite heavily and so is that something you're experiencing that skincare moving to when you say bundle you You mean like bundle of the same product or bundle of different products? Different products. Different products.

48:10Basket. Yeah. So what we created at the very beginning was what we call routines, which are sold as kits. Because if you don't know what to use, buying like a routine is super easy. It's gonna be like, I'm gonna get a cleanser, a moisturizer and like a scrub. And this is called the face kit at Oras. And it has been like the best selling kit. at the very beginning and and people sort of repeat on individual product and they buy different stuff but this one for skincare but if you look at the categories of fragrance or deodorant and stuff like people buy just one product and they are fine with it but for skincare because i mean you need to clean and you need to moisturize and sometimes you have like i don't know you have like very dry skin or you have like wrinkles so you need like an extra steps so it's easy to bundle and for us it's also like the main way to do promotions because we don't do a lot of coupons we don't do a lot of we don't do sales we didn't do black friday for example yeah we don't either we never does that we had like a great week why though why is that because i mean it's this is no collection it's not like uh it's not like a fashion sale where you need to do you do discounting throughout the year yeah we have like kits yeah so you have we have kits and we do bundled discount yeah we have bundled discount it's not like a huge discount it's like five to fifteen percent you're incentivizing people to invest exactly exactly nicola kilner on who was the ceo of decim the ordinary etc the other day and we were talking about like discounting throughout the year black friday and how 66 percent of products are cheaper at another time of the year anyway so it's all it's all the far yeah exactly i mean smoke and mirrors we are we are very very like we have like a very good value for money so like you can get it anytime you want and and to be honest we are also very good value for money because we are happy to have like a smaller margin on a dtc level i mean if you take like the cost of the product and the retail price compared to most brands we just do less but because we are dtc we capture more of the values that's the sort of balance so it's like you got you have like a very good product for a very good price all year long i will not do more promotions and uh but again it's like bundle is like more of a skincare stuff and then yeah people repeat individually and they go through different product so that's um i don't think that's a men's or woman stuff i just think like it's just easy to get everything just with a 10 off yeah so who are the brands you look up to um none no no no no no no no this is like my usual answer but i i'm gonna like think more no no if i if i look at yeah if i look at men's category in beauty none because i'm there is like I mean, Harry's is, but Harry's is interesting up to a point where they don't do the same thing as we do.