Marketing Strategies Every Entrepreneur Can Use

0:00You know, there's so many different e-commerce models, so many different business models, but I think spending that time to focus on the product is so critical because the product is so much more than you know the product. products by tapping into simple, holistic formulas inspired by the sea. They launched Osea Malibu back in 1996. Flash forward to today, Osea Malibu is a clean beauty powerhouse that's been making waves for almost three decades. This is all thanks to Melissa's digital strategy and marketing initiatives that have changed the company's operations. Osea Malibu has managed to stay true to its values while growing over 700 % since Melissa became CEO back in 2016.

1:02I'm very excited to introduce Melissa as my guest today. We'll be learning about her best practices for maintaining profitability and everything she's learned working with influencers and supercharging Osea's online presence. Melissa, welcome to the show. Hello, so happy to be here. Very, very grateful to have you here because Osea has been in the industry for close to three decades. How do you initially design great brand foundations and establish your values so that it can withstand trends and also withstand the years? Well, I think I have to answer that question with a little bit of history about Osea.

1:47So, because I think it's not a typical beginning. We launched in 1996, and I was in high school at the time. I'm thinking I now need to start saying elementary school so I sound younger, but I was in high school. You were a baby. Exactly. I was two years old. and Osea was really my mom's vision in terms of the brand and I was the oldest in the family. I helped her and she had spent over a decade prior formulating in our kitchen and bathtub and she always likes to say the brand came through her like a vision and she spent a lot of time refining the look and feel. And I was so young at the time, but got to be a part of the conversations around naming the brand and the logo.

2:43And her goal was always to build something timeless. I think I would interpret that as it was really to build something just completely true to our mission and purpose. And so like you said, the brand identity of Osea hasn't changed since 1996. We've had the same name, the same logo, the same mission. What has changed is how that brand and identity lives in the world. We're really active on TikTok and all these new marketing channels. And we have been, you know, I'll talk more about my journey and the way we grew in kind of a different trajectory. But for me, I would say our brand mission and our purpose has always just been so clear, so true, unwavering.

3:33And how that story lives in the current times can change, but who we are is always the same at our core. That ties back to the timeless aspect. And I think it also goes back to the phrase of you cannot try to be everything to everyone. You have to have some core values and do some exercises and some thinking when you're brainstorming and establishing a brand. What's your advice there for new founders when they're trying to think about what will make me unique in the brand that I'm trying to build? Well, I think it's harder. You know, the stakes are so much higher now or the landscape is so much busier because we hear about everything.

4:23In 1996, there was no TikTok. There was no Instagram. There was no Facebook. There was nothing. I mean, there was no MySpace even yet. And I think there was a lot less visibility into what existed. And so I think it allowed an environment to come up with something maybe that you hadn't seen just because we weren't seeing everything. That said, when we launched, our idea was really different. It wasn't even called clean beauty. Natural skincare was like a very fringe, not common thing. People didn't understand what we were doing and thought it was really weird. So how do you come up with it today, I think, is such a cool opportunity because there's so much out there.

5:15And there's also, I think that also creates a landscape where consumers are so much more discerning and really gravitate towards what resonates with them in a much more authentic way. Like there's so much to choose from that picking whatever it is you're doing and staying so true actually is the way to speak to your consumer now. Yeah. And I think staying true is also giving you the ability to have longevity because you have to dedicate so much time and effort. So you might as well pick something that you love to do in order to do it for the long run. Oh, my gosh. Talk about the long run. I mean, it is absolutely crazy to have been doing the same thing for so long.

6:02And I think there's so much talk about fast growth and blowing up a business overnight. And it's amazing to do that. And that has not been our story. And that has not been the story of so many. I think that story isn't always as highlighted. And you hit the nail on the head. Imagine if you didn't feel authentic and really committed and like really empowered by what your mission was. I wouldn't have had the endurance to continue. And you had such an interesting path, right? Your mom and yourself start out this business in 1996. You also have taken a detour. You've gained a lot of experience in the digital world, in e-commerce, and you brought your experience and your knowledge back to Osea.

6:48So talk to us about that. How were you able to kind of bring a digital renaissance to the brand? I think as it is with so much, it was a really good combination of luck and timing. And so we started in 96. And for the first, gosh, over a decade, it was my mom and I. We were in our garage. We shipped all the orders. We really quickly identified, and it was a different landscape at the time that being such a small business, we couldn't compete in major retailers, which was really the path of distribution at that time. So we took the brand to the spa market because it was a much smaller market, less competitive and business that the two of us could really manage.

7:34So for the first, I would say 14 plus years, we just sold the products in spas. and we took phone orders. So it was like 99 % wholesale. And while we were doing that, we had other family members helping. It was just a really small business. Everyone always asks if we were profitable. And my answer is always like, how could we not be? It was our job. That was how we sustained our business. And it was a really small business. And we grew 10 % a year. We were really proud of it. And I, during that time, developed a hobby, passion, which I was totally addicted to, which was hula hooping and had the opportunity to join a hula hoop company that was just starting and helped grow and become the CEO of that company.

8:29And it was at like the most magical moment of right when direct to consumer e-com was becoming a thing, like 2010. and we hired one employee. Osea kept running. I stayed involved, but I really focused on the hula hoops for a few years. And I just stumbled into e-com. I had such good luck to discover, you know, hula hooping was like, it's a digital marketing dream. It was all about like girls dancing with hula hoops. And there wasn't any TikTok, but we had a really active Facebook community. We ended up building a website. I learned – I didn't have anyone to code, so I taught myself to code. At that time, we were on Magento, which is a whole other story I can talk about how we got onto Shopify, and learned things like affiliate marketing and things that were really cutting edge at the time and managed to grow that business in a way that was really – we even were on Good Morning America and had a website crash, kind of that whole story of the times.

9:37And when I left that business, Osea was just still there kicking around. And I thought, okay, well, maybe I'll just like build a website. We had an out-of-the-box website that cost$19.99 a month at that point. And I think we did like 50 orders a month. And I was like, okay, I'm going to build a website. This was like 2015. And started building up Instagram. and I thought I would just tinker with Osea for six months and then go do something else. And the rest is kind of history. It was just, I just did everything. I just tried everything that was going on at the time in digital marketing. It was also new and exciting.

10:20And it really shifted the trajectory of the business. So we went from being 99 % wholesale to having this e-commerce platform really picking up. At this point, we were hired one more employee. So there was three of us. And he and I figured out how to code the website and do every which thing. And we were doing email marketing. And we started building an online presence. And then our growth has really been in tandem since then. First, we built that presence. And then retailers started coming to us. So we started launching more in retail and then retail grew. And then in 2020, our D2C grew substantially and then retail.

11:06So I would say I finally really saw what that word omni-channel meant. I'm still learning every day. Love that you went off and had this hula hoop detour. But I think every part of a detour is meaningful to a journey. And it helps you to get a free education into e-commerce. So talk to us about that full circle moment when you step back into Osea world as the CEO in 2016. You had all these incredible relationships with spas, but then you had to tap into the online world and introduce Osea to a new generation of shoppers. Well, I think it's my mom and I always like to say that we're like a perfect whole brain together.

11:52Because, you know, she really built the foundation and the product and the vision around the product and I built the business. And she just fundamentally created a product that her whole idea was to focus on the product quality itself as the marketing. that if we built a great product, people would come back. And one thing I learned from selling Hula Hoops was I was selling a$50 single purchase Hula Hoops. So the customer acquisition, I didn't know that's what it was called at the time. You had to acquire a lot of customers. And with something like skincare or personal care, or there's some other industries as well, like so many people have now figured out, it's a repeat business.

12:41So it was perfectly designed to market it and then be able to retain those customers. And, you know, so many people at that time saw us as a startup. But what made it so unique is we had 15 years of experience building really quality product. And I think that that is, you know, there's so many different e-commerce models, so many different business models. But the idea for us of especially as building like a long-term repeat business, I think spending that time to focus on the product is so critical because the product is the marketing. And then, of course, there's that moment where you've worked on the product long enough and you have to sell it.

13:25So, yeah. And like advice to founders who are thinking about building up their site, building up their digital presence from scratch. Like what do you say to them today that these are some essentials within their checklist that they need to have before they go to market? If I was starting a new product right now, I would immediately in tandem to creating the product, I would work to create an audience because there are so many organic channels. Like TikTok is a perfect example. I think it's easier still to catch some virality there and start, you know, whatever that product is, start creating some expertise and start speaking in whatever that is, some authority that connects to what you're building so that you have a platform to start launching it from.

14:24So that's definitely my first must. And I've advised people starting companies to do it. There's someone I suggested. He was working on a men's health product and he turned himself for the 18 months while he was developing the product into a TikTok expert. And he built about, I think, like 150 ,000 followers. And then he launched his product. And he was doing both in tandem. So whatever your niche is, I would start really connecting with it, build influencer relationships. And that is a piece of just building the audience. In terms of the product, gosh, my advice there is do things, you know, just work to make the product as great as it can be and really put the thoughtfulness in and start selling it.

15:25because I think, I don't know, I know there's many entrepreneurs and founders who we can struggle with a little bit of perfectionism. And I, specifically around marketing, gosh, maybe about eight years ago, I was, I used to obsess on every single word in our email. In our email marketing, I would redesign them. I would just totally have to do everything perfect. And I started A-B testing myself to see if my two hours more work obsessive version did better and it didn't. And it taught me that sometimes you have to just go for it and then learn as you go. and I think that that's very applicable to marketing but in terms of the product like that's where I think you spend your time get your product really solid and then marketing can be really experimental yeah the more you experiment with marketing you get to iterate and also learn from the past content and yeah it's all about executing and experimenting in that way like For me personally, I actually discovered Osea on TikTok as someone was going to the spot that's connected to the store.

16:43Oh, wow. Yeah. And I thought, to your point, is this a brand new digital first company? But no. And then I get to know the full story. It's really beautiful how things tie in together, which just shows the fact that your team is able to stay on top of the trends and embrace new channels. I think I just have to add one thing. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, so that skincare studio that you saw, that is a two-car garage that was the backyard. It happened to be commercially zoned, this garage, of an office that we built that I bought all the plants for, that I picked all the tiles from Home Depot. I think we built the whole thing for like$20 ,000.

17:27Originally, it was like free when we painted the floor and hung curtains so we could pay the rent of a little office that's behind it. And I think it's just like – it's so surprising to me the way people see Osea now that we're like this really big company. And I just like to remind everyone like you just have to start somewhere. And it's so much of what we did. Like if I wanted to open – and this is really like more of a bootstrapping journey of doing what we can when we can and then ideating and spend more. It was like a really big deal when we could actually put in walls into that studio. That's when we spent more money.

18:07At first we had to do curtains. It was a big deal when we could put wood floors in. And it's, I just, I know that, you know, I want someone starting their journey just to hear, like, that's how I started too. I love that. And thank you for pointing that out because it's so important. To your point, someone thinking about starting a brand, they might think, I can't start a spa. I need to have the perfect location, the perfect tools, the perfect setup. but there you were turning a garage into a spot and slowly you know perfecting the location and adding to it but yeah I love that so much just like one sliver of the creativity that you have the other really creative marketing campaign is the leap year sale which I'm sure like there's a lot of fans that wait around for this and it's also very exciting you gotta tell us more about that?

19:03Well, the fact that people could wait around for it is so crazy to me. It's so exciting. I still, I get excited anytime I meet someone and say, oh, I have this brand called Osea, and they're like, what? Because when we did our first leap year sale, it was in 2016. And I think it's a great example of what I was bringing up previously of like staying so true to the core of who we are and then finding ways to incorporate that into modern marketing tactics. So one thing that was really true is we decided very early on we weren't going to put our products on sale. And so when we do promotions, it's gift with purchase.

19:49And we thought it would be really fun. We were like, how do we have a sale? What would be a fun way to do this? And it was our 20th anniversary. And we thought, okay, we'll just once do 20 % off. And then we realized, oh, wait, this is a leap year. And we just had this really funny idea to leap back to 1996-like pricing. And we were like, what a cool way to speak to our core of like what makes us different that we have been around since 96 doing clean beauty. And so we built this campaign in 2016, and it was like a monumental campaign for us. We – you know, what's so crazy is in that month, we sold what's common for us to sell in a day now.

20:41And so – and we did it in 2016, and then we just decided it was so fun. Frankly, it was just so fun to do. I had to do it again. And we did it in 2020. And it was February 28, 2020. And I was like, oh my gosh, do we do it? And I had spent all this time like prepping for two months pre-COVID because I thought like supply chain was going to be disrupted. I made so much product and we went for it. And then everything shut down like a week later. And it was like, so tremendous in helping our business survive through that time. So it was pretty cool to come back and do it again in 2024, to see for the third time, how much the visibility of the campaign had grown, because like people pay attention to the brand now.

21:38And this just started as like, a fun idea in my apartment at, you know, on my couch, and we're like, oh, we should do this. So I think one thing I would say that really struck me that was different is there are now so many more channels to activate on. I went back and looked at our 2016 marketing plan. There was like email on the website. And now it's like email, affiliate, the website, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn. I mean it just is paid search, paid – it's countless. So it's so cool to get to do the same thing four years later in a totally different capacity. And one thing I'll say that we learned in 2016 that we did is we put together every year a time capsule because four years is a really long time to remember.

22:26And so we have a 2028 set of notes and a rundown waiting for us when we do it again. I mean, that's so exciting. And I feel like it's such a fun way to also build up the community, reward those loyal customers. And yeah, it's just such a nice way to like treat back to the community and give them something special to look forward to as well. And also to your point, it's like getting more, hopefully new eyes onto the brand as well during that time. It was also just so fun to design because who doesn't love the 90s? And we actually go like completely off of our brand identity and just go like wild of looking very 90s for three days.

23:07So it's really just halfway for our fun. But it also makes me remember something that I would say is like just a tip I'd love to share that's helped me. Similar to making that time capsule where after we go through something, we take a bunch of notes. I do the same thing and did very successful. Like it's been something that has really worked like after Black Friday to go through and say like, okay, what worked? What didn't work? What would I want to do next year? And then sometimes like throughout the year, I'll schedule send myself reminders to come in as an email from myself. Like I got one actually last week that was like, hey, consider doing a vegan recipe guide again for Thanksgiving because I'd seen something about it that made me – and I think – I don't even remember when I sent that.

23:56So it's always a nice tip to like use technology to send yourself reminders and emails. I love that. I have a scheduled email to myself for 2025. So I look forward to – I love that. To reading that later. But yeah, I think like also with a promotion like that where you are throwing this really great discount, a lot of people will ask about was that something profitable? And I think we need to talk about your whole journey of bootstrapping, being very savvy in the way that you've maintained profitability for Osea. Because I think it's very important for new founders to take note of, especially in the landscape that we're in right now.

24:43Yeah, and especially in the landscape we're in right now. While we're recording this, it's August 2024, and paid spend is so expensive, and it's just going to get more and more expensive leading up to the election. And it's a difficult landscape on the paid side right now. In terms of bootstrapping and profitability, we bootstrapped the company through 2021. And then we raised a small amount of minority capital. And that was really informed by the instability that I felt in 2020 and wanting to have some security in the business to scale our growth. But in terms of being profitable, the way we did that and we started paid ads is we built out this calculator that was essentially like if we spend$100 and we made, let's say,$180 and then we took out our cost of goods and some admin expense, we would then take the profit of that sale and put it back into paid.

26:04And we just built it pretty slowly with a mind for profitability. We watch our ROAS. It still informs our approach to paid spend today because it's pretty easy to let those metrics get off quickly. I think it's important to think about because direct-to-consumer prides itself in a model where they're cutting out, you know, the multi-layered retailer and they're offering the value directly to consumers. But if you're racking up so much paid spend, that in itself is like paying a retailer because you're not passing on the value to the customer anymore. So, yeah, it's very important to think about.

26:48And add Amazon. You know, now it's a really different landscape for us. were available in thousands of stores. We sell at Ulta and Nordstrom's and some other clean beauty retailers and spas are still in the mix as well. And we sell on D2C, which still leads the majority of our revenue. But we also have Amazon. And it's, you know, there's so many touch points as you grow that finding the right mix for that investment on paid. And also, I think one thing I think about a lot too is how paid really is, and paid ads are really a version of brand marketing at this point too, because that's what we're seeing.

27:32So I think my advice is to be really clear on those metrics on spend from the beginning and also I'm very into doing everything in-house. We don't work with agencies. We work with an agency on SEO only. And I think that at the agency level, if you're working with an agency for spend, you really have to manage them very closely. And as a brand that was built on relationships with spas, I feel like you had decades of experience dealing with wholesales and then you entered eventually into retailers. Like what's your advice there where you have to manage multiple relationships, nurture them and make sure that they each feel special as an account, like working with Osea throughout the years?

28:26Well, it's an evolving process, but I think it's really being clear on what the needs of each of those channels are. The way we manage a spa is very different than the way we manage our Ulta relationship. And also being conscious of the customer at that – like our Nordstrom's customer is somewhat different than our Ulta customers. So when we do kits and bundles, we're very conscious of making sure that we have the right fit for them. And I think in terms of picking a retailer, it's really picking a partner that is exactly that, who's truly there to partner with you and to grow with the brand. And Ulta has been a truly incredible partner for us.

29:13All the rumors are true. They are so nice to work with. Just such an incredibly kind and efficient organization. And they have been such a great support. And Nordstrom's has been an incredible partner too. But we went through other retailers that really weren't the right fit. and we made choices to leave them as well because to support a retail relationship, it takes a lot of resources. And so you wanna make sure that you're with a partner that's committed to the long-term. I guess the same in life. Totally, as with all partnerships. And I think this leads really nicely to the different partnerships you have with content creators and influencers, which might be surprising to the listener is that you don't work with the typical beauty influencer per se, and you have a pretty special approach to influencer marketing.

30:09I think it's as all great strategies come from when you're starting something, you work with what you've got and you get creative. And I think that creativity is just so priceless, especially when you're just starting. So when we, after we built the website and Instagram, it wasn't called influencer at the time, but we started realizing like, oh, we could work with all these creators. And what were we calling them at that time? Not creators, but I think originally it was a different name. Anyway, we had no money. So we very quickly knew that we had no competition with traditional high visibility beauty influencers.

30:50So we started thinking about who really aligned with our values. And we went for non-typical content creators. So, you know, in 2016, you didn't see a lot of nutritionists posting about what skincare products they were using. And we went, we found these really cool communities of like nurses and flight attendants and moms. And we would go into a community and my sister and I were running at that time and we just DM them and say, hey, can we send you some of our products? And then we'd go through the comments and see every influencer that commented on that person's post. So we would go into the comments and see what influencers commented on that person's post and we would reach out to them and we'd try and connect with that whole ecosystem so that this community of nurses thought, oh, wow, I keep seeing Osea everywhere.

31:46And we just worked towards value alignment. And, you know, to this day, one of our biggest influencers in the whole brand is this influencer named Fully Raw Christina. And she, I mean, is like incredible. She lives in Kauai. She is on a fully raw food diet. And like she – you may have seen her. I totally have. She has the best hair, the best skin. Yes. But she's not talking about beauty products. She's talking about her lifestyle choices. And she talks about Osea. And we've worked with her for years. But she is – and there's so many creators like that who reflect our values just maybe not in a traditional sense of, hey, this is skincare.

32:35And I think that in so many different companies, you can find those creators who reflect something that's unique to who you are. I love hearing about this because I feel like it gives me a glimpse into how you think. And I feel like you saw this hurdle, but then you kind of like shifted it and like tapped into a more like unsaturated group of influencers, which probably has more engagement than the traditional beauty because they talk about so many brands on a repeat basis versus if someone who don't typically talk about beauty and they mention one brand. And I feel like that makes it stand out much more.

33:18Totally. Yeah. Although this morning I emailed and she responded, so I'm very excited, the TikToker of the moment, Miss Demure Jewel. That's very mindful. Very. Very cutesy of me. Yes. She responded, is interested. And I'm like, oh, I'm starstruck. So we'll see how that goes. But to me, she reflects exactly who we are, too. Oh, my gosh. kind, interesting, fun, but also loves beauty. And I heard she used to work at Ulta last year. And I was like, oh, I love this moment. Like, it's incredible to see how quickly. I mean, we're like six days into this trend and everyone knows. Yeah. Yeah. That's so mindful of you.