How I Scaled My Side Hustle to $15 Million

0:00You can market the s*** out of something, but you're only going to get one purchase if it's not a great product.

0:10Rosie Jane:They say an overnight success takes at least 10 years to build, and Buy Rosie Jane is living proof of that. Founder Rosie Johnson, a celebrity makeup artist, first started blending her own signature fragrance back in 2005. If you don't make the call or turn up at the store, you're never going to get the sale. What began as a personal side hustle officially became a business in 2010. For nearly a decade, Rosie was juggling her makeup career and raising a family all while growing the brand. There is no work-life balance. You have to know that that's the sacrifice. But everything changed in 2019 when Buy Rosie Jane became one of the first ever clean fragrance brands carried by Sephora, a milestone that allowed Rosie to become a full-time entrepreneur.

0:50Rosie Jane:Today, Rosie is still scaling without outside funding and has built an authentic community forecasting up to$15 million in sales this year. Rosie's here to share her journey of bootstrapping, building strong customer loyalty, and breaking into established retail partners. Rosie, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. Let's rewind back to 2005. You are designing this fragrance for who? For me. For me. I love the word designing is, you know, very fancy. I was sitting at a table with a girlfriend. we were sharing a bottle of wine or two and I was like how am I going to kind of cut through what's going to be my signature calling card that is when I was like I'm going to create something that is uniquely me I want people to say can you book me that makeup artist that smells so good that was the goal from the get-go I didn't that I didn't think much further forward than how can I create something that smells amazing that I want to wear and that my clients won't be overly bothered by.

1:52I think that that was probably the key ingredient which made the fragrance the way that it smelled particularly different because you're so close to people.

2:00Rosie Jane:What were you bothered by in terms of fragrances back then? What was going on in the industry? For me, I just never wanted to be in somebody's fragrance backdraft is the way that I would describe it. When someone walks in front of you and I'm behind them and I'm like, Like, oh, I'm so taken and overwhelmed by it. I never wanted to do that to somebody else. As a makeup artist, my hands are in people's faces. I'm, you know, inches away from them. So I wanted something that smelled amazing, that smelled clean, that smelled fresh, that smelled sort of casual and didn't overtake the room. Also, fragrance at that time still was very formal.

2:40Every commercial for it, every advertisement was all about this sort of fantasy, very formal life, beautiful gold gowns, you know, dripping in sort of extraordinary situations. I was busy. I was tired. I had, you know, just had my first daughter. I wanted something that felt uplifting in a second, but also felt casual and still like me.

3:06Rosie Jane:So creating for your own personal experience has been a theme throughout the course of the brand build. How important is it for you to continue to develop product with your own personal experience in mind? And can you highlight any examples of that? For me, I create from such a personal space. And I've used this sort of reference before, which is I think of it like a musician. Songwriters always write and create music from a personal place. And fragrance is very much like that for me and beauty. It adds a realness into it. And I have this line on our website, which is if I don't use it and I wouldn't use it on my kids, it's not going out into the market, right?

3:46Like it's just not happening. And I don't always want it to be super subjective though, where it's like, oh, well, I love gardenia. And everyone was like, I don't love gardenia. But it always starts, that's what the seed of inspiration is. And then it evolves into something bigger or more broad. But my body care line, so I'm 49 years old, I have already gone through menopause. I wanted to create something that felt relieving of those symptoms. That was the biggest sort of driver. I started researching within essential oils, natural remedies, holistic remedies. And that is where that inspiration came from for this new product that we will launch at the end of 2026.

4:30People can tell, or our customers can tell in our fragrances that there's a real love in there. Fragrance is such an emotional product that you can't just be like, oh, I want to create vanilla. And then you just put vanilla and you can, But then you just get some very generic watered down version of what vanilla is with emotion and personal experience. It's layered and complicated and difficult and wonderful. And you get all of the challenges. And, you know, ultimately fragrance is such a layered experience.

5:01Rosie Jane:What goes into actually designing a fragrance? So you're a makeup artist. You have this idea. You see a gap in the market, let's assume. But you don't. Do you have any experience? I don't even think I saw a gap in the market. I was so personal. I think we've all been to farmers markets. They all have the oil stands and you can see all of the different oils and it says Egyptian musk and strawberry and pear or what have you. I basically order online, get delivered a few different notes of something that I think might smell great. I knew fragrances that I already loved and I was like, okay, maybe I could take that as an inspiration.

5:42I really started blending individual notes. So in this case, it was pear, jasmine, fresh cut grass, a little skin musk. And I sort of made this concoction, which ended up becoming Le La Lou fragrance, which is still on the market today. That was my science class. You know, I didn't really think about the ingredients at that point. It was just for personal use.

6:04Rosie Jane:Are you testing this on anybody besides yourself at the time? No, which now looking back, I'm like the danger zone that I could have been in with just, because you assume that, oh, okay, I didn't know what strength I had to use it at. I didn't know everything that I was mixing together. Could they go together? And I think that that's sort of where it led me into this clean journey. As I was wearing it, people were asking me for it. I had had my daughter. I was, you know, I was breastfeeding. And my nearest and dearest people, I was like, sure, here's a bottle of fragrance. I'm just mixing away.

6:39Let me hand it out. Girlfriend of mine owned a store in LA. She asked if I would hand fill her some bottles for Christmas. And I was like, okay, I hand fill these bottles. I type a label on it from a, you know, a typewriter that I literally got from a garage sale. And at that moment, I had this light bulb where I was like, I have no idea what is in this bottle of beautiful fragrance. And I think probably because of my makeup artist background, you're very aware of ingredients. You're constantly thinking what's going on people's skin. How is it affecting them? That it even became like a realization for me.

7:15I started digging. I started doing research, finding out what really goes into fragrance, what could potentially be in this little bottle that smells amazing. But am I just handing out bottle of toxins to everybody? That's, I think, when I really had that moment of like, wow, could I create something that smells like this without all of this mystery and without certain ingredients that maybe don't even need to be there?

7:42Rosie Jane:And there's a five-year gap, right, between ideation to official launch of the brand? Yeah. I think it's just because I was busy, I was working, I didn't have the means or I think probably the true education on what it meant to build a brand. I had dipped my toe in a product development in like 2003 with a cheek and lip pot, which felt very easy and natural for me because I was a makeup artist. But this never felt like something that I was like, I don't know fragrance, I'm not an expert. I'm not a nose. This just felt so personal that I never had that real moment of like, wow, I could actually sell this product and make it, you know, a reality until my girlfriend asked me to put it into her store.

8:30And that was probably 2008.

8:34Rosie Jane:When do you put the brand online? Oh, 2000. I'm going to say 2015. We launched like 2010. And I say launch, you know, loosely. I didn't have money for packaging. I didn't have money for anything. We were printing stickers at like, like a local printing place. We had no boxing. It was just one little roll on bottle. We were hand tying at my kitchen table, the swing tag, which had ingredients on it and a little description of what it was. in 2010, we were also, you know, still in this, we weren't by Rosie Jane, the fragrance and the brand name was Layla Lou, right? Like that was the whole idea around it.

9:13That was the name of the fragrance. It was named after my daughter. So yeah, it was a slow process for me to kind of see the full picture.

9:21Rosie Jane:Okay. So that brand transition to by Rosie Jane, why does that take place? I think because as I wanted to do another fragrance, we had had this success of Le La Lou, and I mean by in little boutiques, we had expanded into 50 boutiques. It was starting to kind of get a little momentum. I think we got a write-up in People magazine as Jennifer Aniston's favorite fragrance, not even knowing if that was real. But that sort of changed everything for us. And I was like, I want to do another fragrance. How could I bring another fragrance out when my entire brand name is the name of one fragrance? So that's when I sort of decided to make that shift to Buy Rosie Jane.

10:08Rosie Jane:So the Jennifer Aniston moment, do you look back on that moment as like a real catalyst? I think it just sort of made me think, okay, this is bigger than what I'm doing right now. Unexpectedly, we were, I think we must have been online at that time as well. gosh, it's all such a blur now. But I just remember this influx of orders and we were hand printing all of these FedEx labels or UPS labels and I couldn't pay the UPS bill at the end of it. Like that's what I remember. Like I was doing net 30 with them and we got this massive bill and I was like, I can't pay it. I just remember it being so significant.

10:46I think it just showed that there was something real there.

10:50Rosie Jane:So zero to 50 boutiques. Yep. And then at some point you get into bigger and bigger retailers. Yes. And you have this major moment in 2019 where you get into the first Sephora door. Correct. Are you contacting Sephora and pitching them? No. Are they coming to you? You know, I had actually emailed them and pitched them probably a few years before they reached out to us. And they were always like, thank you so much. You you know, this isn't a good fit. Great. I was like, okay, Sephora is clearly not for us. They don't, it's not, you know, where we're going to be. We had launched into anthropology at that point.

11:28We had launched into Mecca in Australia and we were just starting to kind of get momentum. The idea and education piece around what clean meant was starting to shift. Before we were always considered natural. That was this big definition. And we were like, no, we are not a natural fragrance. We're a clean fragrance. We don't use certain toxins, but we still use synthetics, you know, and a blend of essential oils and synthetics. I remember getting the email from Sephora saying, hi, you know, my name's Emily. We would be very interested to review By Rosie Jane as a clean fragrance. And I was like, oh my God.

12:10I was like, there's no way they're going to take it, but we'll do it. I think we were four fragrances at the time. I send in everything. We had just repackaged into our full-size EDPs. Perfect timing. Send everything to them. We were still wrapping our bottles in paper, right? We didn't have like full tubing or boxing or anything. Sent it in. I was like, let's see what happens. We didn't really hear from them. It was like crickets. A couple, thank you so much for the samples. We're reviewing. Didn't hear anything. And then I remember pulling up to a makeup job at like five o 'clock in the morning, doing a press junket.

12:50And I opened my email and I saw, hey, we would love to offer you a position at Sephora. We love the brand. And just being like, like, this is real.

13:00Rosie Jane:What does this mean from a cash flow perspective? So it was different then. I see the way that brands have to do it now. we were bootstrapped. So we were profitable. We also manufactured in-house. That was a massive difference for us. So I was able to handle their orders. They also nurtured us so heavily in the beginning. They knew that we were niche. I think they knew that all the brands that were coming in in this clean space were niche. So the orders were large, but we had already had the experience of Anthropologie. Anthropologie does large orders. And we had enough scale in our warehouse to be able to manage it.

13:41Rosie Jane:So how many different retailers are you working with today? So we're Sephora, Nordstrom, Anthropologie. We still have some of our incredible mom and pop stores. And of course, our own DTC. What makes a good retail partner? I think somebody that has vision with you, that isn't just seeing you as somebody to grab and stick on their shelves to, okay, great, you know what, this is the trend, let's just put it in there and then sort of leave the brand to themselves. It's really a partnership. Sephora has been so wonderful at that. They've really, as I said, nurtured us, help us communicate our story.

14:22What do we stand for? Why do we exist? They're brand builders. And I think that's the most important thing in a retail partner, especially if you have your one retail partner, and then, of course, you can satellite off of it. But I would think that that's the important part.

14:38Rosie Jane:So early on, when you were knocking on doors of boutiques, you were doing a lot of cold calling. What advice would you share with founders today that want to take their product into those first retail or boutique doors? No one's on phones anymore, right? So I think that changes everything. Well, they are. They're just not talking on them. Well, that's true. Texting. You know, it's about getting, you have to show up. So even in your local community, I would cold call people. I would, you know, try and find these lists of stores from other brands that I love, not in beauty, but in fashion and be like, okay, where are they?

15:12And then I would like approach them. If you don't make the call or turn up at the store, you're never going to get the sale. You have to push all like fear and embarrassment and worry of the rejection away. You just have to do it, you know? And then you get the first store and you're like, I did it. And then you get 10 more closed doors and then you get the next door. If you don't get out into the world and push, no one's going to do it for you.

15:39Rosie Jane:I think a lot of people listening or watching are thinking about, how do I take my brand from online into retail? And there's just so much of an unknown there. And for you, you were calling on boutiques early on. And at some point, you get into anthropology. Yeah. I mean, did you have any idea what you were doing? No. I mean, sometimes you've got to take that leap of faith. I think what I knew was I had a great product. I knew what we stood for. It wasn't even fully flushed out at that point. And I think, honestly, it's like when Sephora came, we were much more defined in who we were. Thankfully, they had said no to us.

16:23Really, when I look back, we weren't ready. for that kind of exposure. When you are going into Sephora's altars, right, these really big, robust brick and mortars, you've got to stand out. It's very competitive. You've really got to know why you exist. But even in anthropology from that point, and these weird being able to kind of get our feet wet in little stores, define what we meant. How did we talk about it? What did our, we used to make our own shelf talkers and send it to the store with the product that would be like, we're by Rosie Jane. We're the first clean fragrance brand. What does clean mean?

17:01We would answer all these questions. So it was like our university. It was really this incredible learning and education period for us, which is hard now. I think that old school way of building a brand and building it really brick by brick is starting to not be looked at in the same way.

17:24Rosie Jane:Speaking of brand building, a big part of your brand building process has been the sort of perfect mix of community and customer retention. Yes. How intentional are you about those two things? And how do you think about both community retention, which are obviously, I think, critically important to business today? I mean, listen, our community and our customer community is the most important thing that we have. That's what we think about all the time. It's very intentional to constantly be in communication with them, touching base with them, checking in, doing stuff and interacting that we know is going to be meaningful to our community.

18:01You know, I think that where we have been able to kind of lean into it, because we don't have a huge amount of cash, right? We're still bootstrap, but it's this authentic story, making sure that when we're showing up, when we're putting a product onto the market, it has meaning. It has purpose and that our community trusts in that. It's a relationship. We're building, they're building trust with us. As we bring something out, they're like, you know what? I know BuyRosieJane does things X, Y, and Z, and this is why I'm going to follow them along their journey. So we try not to divert from that too much.

18:35Rosie Jane:Are there specific tactics to getting customers to make that repurchase to come back to the website or go back to Sephora and buy again? Ultimately, and this is, I'm pretty sure in every industry, it's about good product. I mean, you can market the s*** out of something, but you're only going to get one purchase if it's not a great product. We have beautiful, luckily, fragrances that resonate with people. Not all of them. Of course, there are always missteps. But there's something very true and real about the fragrances that we put out onto the market. And ultimately, it's the likability of that.

19:12And then the backup of a great story. We love to give back to our community. We have a lot of intention in what we do. Hopefully make people feel good about the fact that they're buying a product that they love anyway.

19:25Rosie Jane:I would think that it's not that easy, though, given how competitive the industry is. Yeah. I mean, there's a bazillion fragrances out there. Yeah. You know, the product can stand out. It can smell terrific. But I would think that storytelling becomes an unbelievably important piece. Yes. Like the customer has to understand why Buy Rosie Jane is different from everything else in the market. Yes. And then you're largely responsible for communicating that. 100%. It always comes back to story. But fundamentally, if that product isn't great, they're never going to come back anyway. So you have to have both.

20:02They have equal importance. But yeah, and the consistency through story. People don't shop in the way that they used to. People shop where they are, right? whether it's Amazon, in-store, by rosiejane.com. You know, it's about convenience. It's about speed. So if that story isn't consistent across every touchpoint, it gets lost. How do you feel about being the face of the brand today?

20:30Rosie Jane:Which, rewinding back to 2010, 2005, I don't know that people really wanted to see who the face of the brand was or who the founder or CEO was, the way that they do today. I mean, the shopper really wants to understand what is the origin story? Who is the founder? Who is this person? Who's Rosie Johnston? Is this natural for you to sort of step into the spotlight, be more active on social, be front-facing with your community, things like that? No. I mean, I was a makeup artist, so I purposefully chose to be more behind the scenes. My sister is an actress. She is very in front. But it comes naturally now, I think, for me because I'm telling my story.