The Product Launch Strategy That Earned Glamnetic Millions

0:00As soon as you have the idea, someone already probably thought of the same idea. and it's just a matter of like who can execute faster. So you have to really be willing to take that first step literally before you're ready. Hey, how's it going? I'm Shuang Esther Shan and you're listening to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. Before becoming a multi-million dollar beauty mogul, Anne McFerrin was trying to build her career as an independent artist. But her whole life changed when she came up with the idea to make magnetic eyelash extensions. Within 12 months, she launched her brand Glamnetic, solving the common issues that makeup lovers face when trying to glue on their false eyelashes.

0:44Just after a year in business, Glamnetic earned$50 million in revenue and caught the intention of partners like Sanrio, Sephora, and Ulta Beauty. Anne is my guest today. Welcome to the show, Anne. Thanks for having me. So excited to have you here. I know that you loved beauty. You weren't necessarily in the industry, but you noticed that there could be a little more innovation with the way that we were applying our false lashes. Talk to us more about that. Yeah. So I was honestly kind of stuck in my career path at the time. I was a full-time artist. I was making money painting people commissions.

1:26I actually graduated UCLA with a degree in psychobiology. But when I graduated, I was like, medical field doesn't feel right. Let me try my own like company. So I sort of just did my own thing with painting for a while. And I did it for about four years. But I felt like I was starting to feel momentum lagging because I would always have to be in front of the canvas painting in order for me to make money. And it was eight hours of painting every single day. And I was by myself. So it was a very lonely endeavor. and I couldn't see myself doing it for the rest of my life. And so when I saw an opportunity to go into business, I had a lot of friends that were actually using Shopify.

2:06And I think around that time, it was like 2018 when I first considered it and Shopify was having this like major awareness around it. A lot of people were like referring other people to start Shopify stores. And I was like, what is this Shopify hype? Let me check it out. And a couple of my friends had already made like a few hundred million on their store, which was crazy. So I was trying to understand what the lifestyle was being a founder. I had never been exposed to it before. I had just graduated college four years prior, and I was very curious and interested to understand more about it. And when I was really ready to make the leap into another career path, I thought to myself, like, what is something that I've always been passionate about?

2:48And that for me was lashes at the time, not magnetic yet, but I was looking into magnetic lashes because that was the only thing at the time that was innovative enough to find a sort of like white space for people who didn't know how to apply lashes. I noticed that a lot of my friends just didn't know how to apply lashes. And I was like, why is there nothing on the market that solved this problem? Magnetic lashes were the only product at the time that sought out to fix the gap there. The problem was with magnetic lashes. There was no like easy way to apply magnetic lashes. They were very hard.

3:22If you tried to apply them, they were like, you have to sandwich your lashes in between two layers of magnets. And it just didn't stay on. They would always slip off and they were also like really arduous to apply. And so I kind of went down a rabbit hole on the internet, just trying to like research the product more and understand if there's like anything out there that would be a better solution that maybe nobody thought of. And I did stumble upon, you know, the whole like magnetic eyeliner concept. What was existing on the market wasn't executed well. It was maybe like in a pot form. And I wanted to create like a liquid form.

3:55And I also wanted lashes that were more glamorous. I really loved glam lashes because I felt like they opened up my eyes more. Also being from Asian heritage, I also felt like I always wanted to like figure out ways to like make my eyes look bigger because like I felt like all of my friends had these big eyes. And I grew in school where I was the only Asian person in school. And I felt like I got a little bit bullied because of that. So I definitely think I had like an insecurity around it. So yeah, I kind of went down this whole product development pipeline to try to understand like how to create it and basically spend about like a year and a half developing it.

4:31But I did all the research myself. Like I didn't have a mentor. I realized that every answer that you ever need to find is out there on the internet now. Like it's pretty accessible everywhere. YouTube was the main teacher for me. I would say YouTube was sort of the start of everything. And then from there, like it guided me to a lot of different websites where I could like learn more. And yeah, about a year and a half later, I came up with the prototype, which then got launched. It's funny that you mentioned YouTube was your main source of knowledge. I do remember seeing you on YouTube and painting incredible murals for some of my favorite YouTubers.

5:07You have this idea. it took over a year to actually develop and research and really fine tune the product. How do you stay motivated during that process and also stay true to that idea? Because it's very tempting to give up during that process. That's a very good question because I feel like some people get sidetracked. And I think a big thing, not even just in entrepreneurship, but in life is shiny object syndrome. If you see something else that's better or like trending at the time you're like, wait, am I like spending my time on the right thing? I was just kind of obsessed with this idea because again, like I was a big lash lover and I just didn't see anything out on the internet or on the market that kind of provided a solution for it for people that struggled with lash application, which is actually most people.

5:54So I felt really excited about the idea. I felt like this felt like the right idea. I just felt it like to my core. I was like, this is, this is it. So that was the vision that drove me because I had a vision for what the feeling would feel like when I felt like I solved this problem. And so I stuck to my guns on it. And it did take over like a year and a half to develop because I had no idea what I was doing. And I just ran into like a lot of different vendors too that weren't the right vendors. Like I sampled over like 100 samples or something like over 150 vendors. And it took me a while to understand like what to look for to find the right one and finally like maybe two created the right sample that I was looking for and that's when also that's when I coined the name glametic because that was the original name like glam magnetic was it was a combination of those two words so it just felt right I also wanted it not to be a lash brand because I just I didn't want the word lashes to be in it because I felt like glam that it could be something more than just lashes Totally.

6:58It's also that draw of magnetic energy that you draw people with your products. Exactly. That's incredible. Over a hundred different products and iterating. What is your tip when you're going through that process? How do you keep track of everything? How do you stay confident when you're negotiating with these producers, essentially? Yeah. When negotiating, I think I just go with the method of like, they need me more than I I need them because I have like there's so many more vendors to choose from and like they want my business. So like how do I negotiate in a way that I'm like, hey, like I'm literally just starting off the business.

7:31Can you like give me a break here on the first, you know, few runs? And I also started very small, like only started with 100 units per SKU when I first started. And of course, like while you're iterating, you also have to manage your own finances, which I think also is a very intimidating area of business. how did you make sure that you had your own runway when you're trying to develop the product the design and everything yeah i think it depends on the product so the nature of the product and the industry or the niche that you're trying to go into definitely some of them are a lot more capital intensive than others also like if you're going to color cosmetics it's even more capital intensive than something like lashes which is more considered even like a makeup accessory than it is like true makeup.

8:19So for us, like we actually very low budget. Like I maybe started off with like$10 ,000 and then I tried to really make that stretch as far as I could. So that would mean that I would have to do everything myself. I couldn't hire another person to do the things I needed to do. So that's why things took a lot longer as well. You're not buying someone else's time. You're gonna have to use your own time. so I only spent like maybe$5 ,000 on samples like when you added it all up samples are actually pretty affordable especially if it's from overseas suppliers it's pretty affordable the part that gets a lot more expensive is like marketing costs so like once you actually launch in all of the photo shoot if you want professional photography and like having like a real photo shoot that can go up really high so that's why I actually just learned how to do professional photography by myself.

9:12So I was the photographer. I bought my own camera. I brought like all the props and stuff on Amazon and then I just did it myself. So you can make things as cheap as you want. It depends on what you're aiming for when you launch. Like for me, I wasn't aiming for the best brand ever created, like with the best branding or anything. I didn't understand anything about branding at the time, but I did understand what people wanted. I understood the customer because I was the customer. So I was like, okay, I'm just going to focus more on like the product innovation piece. And then like the branding, the packaging, photography, all that stuff can come later.

9:49I also wasn't shooting for the moon. I just wanted to make like 10k a month. That was literally my, I was like 10k profit a month. I'd be happy. And then it ended up like far exceeding that, which yeah, I didn't expect. I think it's good to start with low expectations when you're going into something like this, because when you go in with high expectations, being like, I'm going to be a multimillion dollar company by the end of this year, you kind of get ahead of yourself. You need to really keep your eye in the present. I think that's something that's really important to you as a founder is like you get too ahead of yourself.

10:21Sometimes you end up tripping over yourself because you're already thinking in the future of like, I'm already making a million dollars. But no, like you are a bootstrap, self-founded founder that like has very minimal capital to start with, which is awesome, but you have to think like that. Yeah. I know that you had that$10 ,000 revenue target monthly, but you far exceeded that by actually reaching million dollar revenue per month and more. But I love that you were saying that you have to stay realistic with your goals and also save money while you're trying to build up your business. I understand for branding and seeking out models, you actually had a really good way of finding models to pose for Glamnetics.

11:06So talk to us about using Bumble BFF for reaching out to potential models. Yeah, that was another way of me trying to be very bootstrappy. Because again, like I'm literally just think about me, like I was 26 when I first started. And you know, I had a lot of girlfriends. And I also realized like something about having a lot of girlfriends is like girls love it when you do their makeup and they just love like their photos taken you know so they just like want to feel beautiful and I was like oh wait why don't I just like do that with you know Glamnetic and just I went on Bumble BFF and I just swiped on like all the girls that I wanted to be models for me and then I'd be like hey do you want to come over like I just started this brand like I'll give you free lashes and also I'll do your hair and makeup and I'll take professional photos of you.

11:54And like, who would say no to that, you know? So they just like came over, hung out, like we chit chatted like as friends too. And then I would do their hair and makeup. And that was like how I got my initial first models. I also asked a lot of friends. I'm like, Hey, do you have any friends that like are models to like actually professional models that would like be down to like support me right now. And that's another thing you have to use your network. Like people are so willing to help you when they know that you are following your dreams you know they're so excited that like someone is breaking out of the mold in your community to like do something big and that was really cool to see that when my friends like all really came out to like support me like I had like huge back orders like in December because I didn't expect to sell so much and so we ended up like overselling and so I had to like had like a massive rush shipment come in and I had over like 5 ,000 eyeliners that needed to be stickered and boxed and then I had four friends come over and just like help me like all day to do this and it was just like a pizza party like I just ordered pizza for everyone and we're just all laughing and conversating but also like had this big like assembly line um going on and that was so fun so like those are memories I you know hold on for forever I don't think we'll we'll face you know similar issues like that anytime soon because now we know like how how to order and stuff but But yeah, those are things that I look back and I treasure.

13:15I'm like, those were the funnest times. Sounds like you had so much fun during those periods, but also support from your friends is so important when you're making these giant risky decisions. Before Glamnetic, you actually studied psychobiology, thought about a career in medicine, and then you decided to become a full-time artist. What's your advice for making those giant pivotal decisions and actually taking the plunge? Yeah, I would say take the first step before you're ready because you're never going to feel like you're fully ready. Because when are you ever going to feel fully ready? You know, like, is it five years from now?

13:56Like 10 years from now? You know, like at that point, you already kind of missed the boat with like your idea. The thing with, I think this entrepreneurship world is everything moves so quickly, like trends and everything. So like, as soon as you have the idea, someone already probably thought of the same idea and it's just a matter of like who can execute faster so you have to really be willing to take that first step literally before you're ready because that other person will it's a very competitive industry and people are getting better and better and better i'm seeing like brands better brands come out more than ever that i hadn't seen before like more innovative brands is like technology has advanced even further and try to believe in yourself.

14:36I think that's the main thing. You got to really believe in yourself because no one really is going to believe in you. And I feel like I do see some people who are like wanting to start brands and they come up to me and they ask me all these questions, but it seems like they're looking for answers everywhere else, but within themselves. Like they're, they're, they're coming from a place of lack and they're, they're coming from a place of the answers are somewhere out here and it's not within me, but like you really need to feel like everything and all the answers that you will ever need is within you.

15:06And the answers are all on the internet. Also, if you actually like are confused about something, they're right there. You don't necessarily need to wait for the perfect mentor either. Yeah. Really take ownership of the journey or the business that you want to start. Yeah. Very interesting to hear about the beginning of Glamnetic. And I'm very excited to dig into the expansion part of the journey as well. But first, I would like to take a moment to thank you for tuning into the show. Wherever you are getting your podcasts, go ahead and give Shopify Masters a follow. And if you haven't already, please give us a review with your feedback.

15:46Our team loves reading them. Thank you so much.

15:52So, of course, we know that you identified this problem that makeup lovers have. So there was this product market fit that you found incredibly fast. The next hurdle is obviously getting your product out there and sharing the story and getting people to actually try out your product. So how did you approach that? Yeah, that was very organic. I'm already very naturally a curious person. So I'm curious about everything. So obviously when I'm creating something like this, I'm like, okay, immediately, what are people thinking? Even as I'm going along the process of sampling, I'm asking my friends to try them out and I'm like bringing them along the journey of testing.

16:31So like I've had some friends who tested like so many different prototypes because I'm just like really curious about that. And I think that's very important. You need to be inquisitive and not just depend on your own opinion, but the opinion of others because you could be skewed in a certain way and you're not like considering like all angles. and so that really did help and I think by the final prototype when I handed it to somebody and they were like literally freaking out because they were like this is the craziest beauty product I've ever tried I'm like oh my god okay like it got me so excited and so much more confident about my own product and that's another thing you have to really believe in it like you have to fully believe like die for your product vibes I was very intense about it but I was like I will die for my company because I just felt like it, you know, it was the first time in my life where I felt like I'm fully doing this on my own accord.

17:23This was my fully my ideas is fully my brainchild. And this is my purpose. And I felt like a sense of purpose for the first time. And I think that's also another amazing thing about entrepreneurship that maybe people don't talk about enough. Like, obviously, a lot of people are doing it because they want money. But I think it's it for me, Like it was the purpose that it provided. It gave me like fuel in such a different way. Like I never had so much mental energy in my life, but it came from a place of passion. You have to emanate that, you know, people have to feel that. And I think people felt that from me, not just my friends, but like even when we started, you know, on social media and I was basically running ads with me talking about the product.

18:06And that's what really blew us up was like me talking about the product. This was before TikTok. So it was kind of before people would do these like quick like ads sort of on TikTok. Like I would be the one doing that and talking about my own products. And, you know, people just love the instant transformation that it provided and how quick and easy it was. I remember those ads and I remember it grabbing my attention and actually making me pause during my scrolls. It's truly magnetizing people to your product. I think a lot of people will be curious to say like you knew to have videos in your ads and they were very concise and compelling.

18:46For now, if I'm starting a new business, how do I do that with my new product? How do I make a good video? Yeah. Oh, my God. It took me a while to like be comfortable in front of the camera because I'm like actually a little bit more of an introverted person. And it takes me a little bit of time to like get out of my shell with people. And so it was really awkward to just sit alone in my room and talk to my phone. But I got very used to it because I would just practice all the time. And once I, I mean, I started doing it pretty much like every night after a workday and I would film like 40 videos a night.

19:20And I did that for like two and a half years. So it just became kind of second nature. Now I can like turn it on super quick because it's just like muscle memory. But it takes a while for you to get that muscle memory. I know a lot of people are like uncomfortable with that, but it's so important now more than ever, because, you know, we're in the age where like people are literally, I don't even feel like I talk to my friends as much as find out about what they're doing on social media. It's like, I don't even, you know, like the conversations have gotten so much less. And now it's more about like, like checking in on them on social media, which is, it's kind of sad, but like, that's just how the world is moving.

19:56And so you have to, you have to move with it, especially now more, like even more so than five years ago. And so now I think it's more important than ever as a founder to be the face of the brand. Like it's that's so important. I feel like that's what people connected with for me is my brand story and just like my founder story. That was really what people gravitated towards even more so than the product. Obviously, you have to have a great product. But I think having a face behind the brand that like can tell their story behind it like helps so much more. So, yeah, I think I would practice. you mentioned 40 videos a night that you were making for a year or two why at such a high volume and is that like what founders should aim for well because we were running a bunch of ads on on instagram facebook all of meta pretty much and you have to have like multiple iterations of different ads and to test to see which one's going to perform a lot of them don't end up like becoming scaled up, but some do.

20:57And like some, we end up spending like hundreds of thousands, even millions on because it works. So you have to like try different lines, different scripts, different, I don't know, like changing my background, changing my hair, changing my top, like just different things where it could grab people's attention. I don't have to do that anymore now because like our brand has now been more, we started a whole new category of press massive like rise in popularity and people are now like starting to stop going to salon services and move into like DIY beauty and so that's sort of our bread and butter think about lashes that's DIY think about nails that's DIY but because nails it's like mostly hands I don't have to be in it as much but when we were doing more like lash focused stuff like I was definitely the one to talk about it all the time so it just depends also on the nature of your product like you know for me I had to really use my face there.

21:54But yeah, I think it's very important to figure that out too. Like what is going to sell your product online? That's very important because some people, it's not necessarily even someone talking to the camera. It's maybe it's like demonstrating something. Maybe it's just hands doing something. Like you have to figure out what that clever thing is that makes people want your product. Wow. Yeah. I think we talk about A-B testing in ads, but I feel like you were A to the last letter and repeat. So that's truly, truly amazing. Now you're also expanding into the new product category. What was the decision process like?

22:34What kind of data were you looking at to understand, okay, now we should move into press on nails? Yeah, it's kind of crazy because it wasn't necessarily like data driven, more like like an observation of what was going on. I felt, again, like we really wanted to cement ourselves as like leaders of like DIY beauty and nails were a natural extension because it's like you do your nails and your lashes. And I feel like people can get their nails done even more than their lashes. And at the time, there's just no trendy like press on nails on the market. Like what you see on your Instagram feed, like the things you get served, you don't really see that those in like press on nail form you have to like go and show your nail tech and then she like takes two hours three hours to draw it on your hand and then you're paying like a hundred plus dollars for that set and hours of your time I've been pre-planning all of that so it's just like why all of that stress in time so I wanted to take the stress out of the process and just create press on nails that were actually like thicker like more durable that felt like acrylic quality but also was like on trend.

23:36And then also my ideal scenario was also us like launching pretty often, which we do now. We launch like once a month and we are always like giving people like the latest and greatest styles. We have a lot of very like evergreen styles that people always come back for. And we get like a lot of repeat purchases just for that style because some people only want to wear like a French tip or something. So we have options for everyone. What we like to do is do like a modern twist on a classic design. So it's not boring. And also do, you know, all of the solids that people really love different finishes like glazed velvet, we want to cover everything.

24:14And then on top of that, we're throwing in IP collabs. So we just did collabs with Harry Potter. And we did Hello Kitty. And those are massive successes. We're going to do more going into the future. We have two lined up end of this year that are going to be really cool. So yeah, we just want to continue to push the envelope and become, you know, continue to become like the leading brand for on-trend press on nails. Yeah. I mean, those are incredible brands to be collaborating with, Sanrio and Harry Potter. What's your advice for founders to actually establish those connections and also develop those relationships over time?

24:53Yeah, I think people underestimate LinkedIn. You can actually find a lot of the buyers on LinkedIn, like people who do licensing for various IPs and just like find their contact or like message someone in that IP and then they'll lead you to somebody else to message on LinkedIn and just kind of do that. If you know, that's if you don't have a PR agency that you work with, you know, once you get to like higher revenue, I do recommend like getting just to go PR agency. We don't, we don't actually hire any agencies. PR is really the only agency that we use because everything else is in-house, which by the way, I highly recommend you all, you do all marketing besides PR in-house, like digital marketing, all in-house, like going with an agency is just really, you know, they kind of do the bare minimum and they charge you a lot versus you like training your own video design team and do having a head of growth and all of that, we found like way better results doing that.

25:54Definitely LinkedIn and try to like just be scrappy with like, you know, making these relationships and just like showing them like what your brand looks like. And because at the end of the day, they also want to find really good brands to partner with because they get a cut. They get a, you know, there's a royalty rate. So they get a cut of all the sales you make. So like the more like the more partnerships, the more money they make. So it's actually, you know, in their interest as well. Yeah. Well, such practical advice. I do have to ask you because as an artist and as a founder, you constantly have to come up with new ideas.

26:30How do you stay creative and where do you get your inspiration from nowadays? Oh, yeah, that's a great question. I feel like I've matured so much in the last five years in terms of my taste, like in everything, not just like visual art, but music and I've also gotten a lot more into like the spirituality realm like manifestation and meditating and all of those things and I feel like they all kind of coalesce together to kind of inspire me in in a lot of ways and also like working on I know it sounds woo but I have been like working on like raising my vibration through meditation on a regular basis and just like studying more about like ego and how to control your ego and know when it's controlling your mind versus when it's actually like your intuition.

27:20That plays a big role, I feel like in my creativity and making me feel like consistently inspired every day and happy. I think that's the biggest thing because I do find like a lot of founders can get a little, you know, sad. It's like, it's definitely one of those things that if you're not working on yourself emotionally then it's going to hinder your ability to work within your company. You have to work on yourself. And it's basically proportional. Like if you're a happy founder, your company is going to be happy because then your company and like your employees are going to feel the vibes of you being happy or down or not.

27:58So it kind of sets the tone for the culture of the company in a lot of ways. So that's why I think it's so important, like mental health and wellness. I started lifting really heavy weights like I don't know like a year ago and so like my body has changed through like lifting weights and I feel so much better overall because of that do things that challenge you and like make you grow and help you like strive for more because I'm always like setting PRs and like trying to like lift more and I do spiritual retreats with my friends so and we dabble in psychedelics and like stuff like that so I think it's it's like kind of trying to do as much as you can to like really get to know yourself on a deeper level and travel you know take breaks and travel you know like especially once you start hiring people out like three years in we're like okay now we have you know 60 80 employees now so it's like once you start getting more people to help you like take that vacation like really do things that make you feel happy and whole indulge in those things and like have hobbies because again this is a marathon this is a marathon not a sprint and i people have told me that and i'm like what does that really mean okay okay, now I get it.