Tools for Collecting Market Research & Community Feedback

0:00I had hit her up cold email over COVID and I said, this is what I'm creating, what do you think? And she basically came in as like a mentor and advisor to really help formulate like, what are the colors? How does this come to life? Hey, what's going on? It's Shuang Esther Shan and welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. Knowing what your customers want is essential to building a successful business. That's why Nadia Okamoto launched her brand August after compiling years of community feedback. August makes sustainable period products designed with users in mind.

0:38Nadia is also sharing her business journey with more than 4 million TikTok followers. She's here today to chat all about product innovation, social impact, and how you can engage with your customers on social media before and after launch. Nadia, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. So before August launched, you were so active within the period advocacy space. And of course, you conducted so much market research, if you will, to understand what consumers wanted, what was lacking within the industry. What was the most important thing you did pre-launch that helped you to build August?

1:18Yeah, I think that the most important thing we did pre-launch was just a lot of community conversations and being really flexible with our timing, right? Our launch date and or initial like product order got pushed back numerous times. And I think that that's something that we were really flexible on because it was in service of better understanding our community, right? I came into the period care space to start a company after spending six years working on a nonprofit where we were distributing period care to people in need, talking to thousands of people to understand what is the vision for menstrual equity, better period care, more transparent period care.

1:57And I'd also been on book tour and written this book where I was interviewing so many menstruators about like, what is the meaning of this industry of meaning of periods? How do we create conversations around it? But I think even on top of six years of experience of doing that work, there was still so much that we had to learn around the consumer behavior around period care specifically. And so for us, we really prioritize building community, talking to our community, and prioritizing it to the point that we could be flexible on timing if it was in service of better understanding and being thoughtful about our growth.

2:28The advocacy work, the research for your book and consultancy, I think a lot of that might come with pressure when you're trying to think about a consumer product and actually placing a price on something you're creating. How did you overcome that mental hurdle? I think that a lot of my mental hurdle was simply around making the decision to start a for-profit consumer brand. I had spent years more identifying as an activist, grassroots organizer, working in nonprofits, where I think I had and still hold a lot of challenging feelings about American capitalism. And I think I still struggle with those a lot.

3:08But for me, I think it was finding myself in a position around like 2018, 2019, where through the experience of running a nonprofit, experiencing the nonprofit industrial complex, wanting to change an industry that I was dependent on for funding to keep the lights on, but also running for office and realizing electability in this country is literally about how much money you raise, who has money, special interests. And I think feeling disheartened by that really led me back to like what in a consumerist capitalistic culture of America, how do you make change with consumer behavior, consumer understanding, which is really culture, right?

3:41And so the experience was like, I changed my whole college major to study American capitalism, how social narratives are changed. And I think it really led me to have the knowledge and confidence in the decision of eventually raising capital and starting August. Yeah. Being within commerce and making that positive impact and crossing that threshold. A lot of change within your career, so many different chapters. But one thing that stayed consistent is building up community, chatting with actual customers and understanding what they want. So talk to us a bit about engaging on social media, using Geneva to have two-way conversations and actually keep potential customers engaged throughout the whole process.

4:29I think being a business that does everything inspired by our community actually comes from a lot of my experience in the nonprofit and politics world, right? Where in nonprofits, you're there to serve a community, right? And so everything you're doing is in response to hearing what those needs are. you don't have a capital interest in doing so. The goal is service. And also in campaign politics, it starts with listening tours, understanding what constituents need, and then advocating for constituents and then needing the vote of constituents. And so I think for me, it was when I look at building a consumer brand, it's that same mentality.

5:03Who are we serving? Who's the end user? What do they need? What are they not currently getting? And how can we do it in a way that is unique and different? And I think for us, it started as Zoom calls, iMessages, And then we were looking kind of for a conversation platform and Geneva really fit what we were looking for, mostly because it was free and easy to use. And we're a small business where we didn't have a lot of resources to spend, but even Slack, that costs a lot of money once you hit a certain threshold of number of users. Digging a little deeper about building this community and choosing Geneva as the platform to have discussions on, why did you go with that platform?

5:40And why did you want to have this space where you had that ability to have those two-way conversations? Before we were on Geneva, I was using iMessage and just literally texting people. And when our community started becoming like hundreds of people, that wasn't so feasible anymore, right? So we were looking at a bunch of different community platforms because we knew we wanted it to be about conversation. And I think, I mean, I think about this a lot today, which is like, what is the difference between audience and community? To me, audience is like one person has the mic, other people are listening.

6:15Community is more, they're all talking, everybody has the mic. And then our job as a brand or as like the host of it is about holding the space, right? Not necessarily be the one just on the microphone. And so for us, we knew we wanted some sort of conversational space. Slack costs money. Discord is too known as cut for gamers. And we also didn't want Facebook because none of our users were really using Facebook. And so Geneva was actually the perfect platform for like a small business because it was free. It was a free tool. And we were also able to kind of have the same capabilities of Slack in a way that was really resonating with our audience.

6:52Mm-hmm. And I feel like through those conversations and also all of the work you've done, you've truly been changing the industry from actually product testing with menstruators to showcasing not just blue dyes and gels in marketing material. Talk to us why changing those aspects was also so important for you. Yeah. I mean, I think that my mission over the last 10 years of my career has always been to de-stigmatize periods. And I mean, a big part of why I decided to start a brand was I had written this book my sophomore year of college that came out with Simon & Schuster. And in the book, I was trying to answer the question, why does the period stigma exist and how do we take it down?

7:35And one of the most impactful chapters to write even for myself was this chapter I wrote where I did a lot of research about the history of the commodification of period care. And it's specifically about in the 20th century, you know, tampons and pads entered mainstream markets in like the 1930s. And if you look through all of the old like vintage period ads, they're very angering, right? Because it literally says like, buy the product to hide your period, forget you have a period, right? And a lot of even the original branding, like if you think about stay free pads, right? The name and the marketing around it was you are not free from like the shackles of womanhood, unless you buy the product and then you are free, right?

8:14And so I kind of came to the conclusion that the period stigma exists because of how the products were marketed, right? It was marketed to incentivize the stigma around periods to say, feel shame around it. Don't talk about it. Buy the product, forget about it. And buy the product, it will fix all your problems. And so I think for me, it led me then to the conclusion that if brands and marketing around these brands have been a part of creating the stigma, then they also have the opportunity and responsibility to take down the stigma. And that's where I think for me, the exciting part as like a person who I love working on brand, I think that consumer brand, and this is also links back to the confidence I have in making this decision to come into the for-profit social business side is, you know, we have the resources, the flexibility, the freedom, the opportunity to actually shape the message we want.

9:05And consumers in a consumerist culture are incentivized to have that relationship with us to actually do that work, right? And so for me, I think part of the impetus of wanting to start a brand was because it was an opportunity to change the conversation around periods. I mean, for myself personally, as a menstruator, I remember the first time getting my period and feeling like, why are we all keeping a weird secret? And how come I didn't know about this, like, in the start slash early part of my life? So yeah, thank you so much for changing the dynamics of the industry to actually have these conversations not in just the communities you build, but throughout the marketing efforts and all aspects of the business.

9:50So obviously, the consumer experience is always top of mind. You're also revamping the shopping experience. Talk to us about this recent decision to replatform and also change up how the online store is going to look. Yeah, so we actually just rolled out our Shopify site yesterday, which we're super excited about. We originally launched on a non-Shopify backend. And I think for us, it was a decision made because from the very beginning, part of our direct consumer offer is highly customizable period care. And so that means consumers can come on and tell us exactly what they need, the assortment of tampons, pads, different sizes, and then have it delivered to their door.

10:39When we got to a certain size, though, there's a whole industry of tools for direct consumer brands, right? Whether that be to better understand analytics, to support with going through payment failures, to better understand attribution. And all of those tools are made first and foremost for Shopify businesses, Right. And so I think part of it is as a subscription customizable period care brand, the ability to better understand the behaviors of subscribing customers, but also to use all of these complementary tools, you know, it becomes more helpful to be on Shopify for which these tools were actually made for.

11:23Very happy to hear about that. And also, as I mentioned at the top of the show, we love watching your content on TikTok and other platforms to understand the business journey, but also watching your overall life journey as well. And I think a lot of founders struggle with that, being open and sharing about their life and their professional journey as well. What's your advice there to continuously share and be open and just be active within the content space as well? I would say that for me, being open on social, I think is a personal decision for anybody to make. For me, it comes very naturally.

12:06I think I've always been someone who processes externally in creative ways, whether it be when I was younger, I would paint my feelings. Or as a dancer, it was about movement. The performance of my life and experiences comes naturally to me. And I say that because I definitely have friends where being in front of the camera is not natural to them. It doesn't fill them with energy. It's not fun. for me it's really fun right and so for me I love being able to you know talk about my life share my life and it also helps me feel less lonely right because the experiences I have either as a survivor as someone with like borderline personality disorder as a founder I am often struggling with feeling of loneliness and it is actually through creating online content that I feel less lonely because I connect with people who feel the same way right so for me I think my advice to other people is like, find what works for you.

13:06Because for some people, it might be long form written. For some people, it might be long form written that you never share right in a diary. For some people, it helps to share. It's empowering. For me, I love video. I love short form video because I don't have the attention span to make really long form video. And I love to share it. And so I feel like a lot of people ask me this question, and they expect me to be like, you just got to get on and keep posting. And I think I used to say that, but the more I've been able to connect with other founders and friends where like, that doesn't fill them with energy.

13:36It actually is really unnatural. It takes a lot of time. And like, that's just not the best use of your time and energy. And so you don't have to force yourself to do that. And you've been very transparent about both personal and professional journey. And I think the most important kind of part where you highlighted is also the fact that you had to balance so many different jobs and there was a period of burnout. Talk to us about managing your own mental health while you're still building a business at the same time as well. I've dealt with burnout like at different stages of my career like and I think that's what people often don't talk about which is that burnout is not something that just happens once and then you're like over it right.

14:20It's kind of I mean burnout is not even like a diagnosable term right. It's a nickname for the feeling we have of being overwhelmed. And, you know, in high school, I was so overcommitted. I was doing like 16 clubs and rolling this organization and, you know, trying to be a straight A student and like gunning my way to Harvard. And I experienced it in the sense there where I would actually pass out from exhaustion and then wake up in the emergency room, like hooked up to an IV. And that was very normal for me. And I think that it's taken a lot of unlearning to realize like, oh, sleep is not a waste of time.

14:53I should probably sleep. It's okay to say no to different opportunities if I don't actually want those opportunities or if I'm not doing them for the right reasons. And so I say all that to say that I think it's taken many years. And then I eventually went to residential rehab in 2020, right kind of at the beginning of August. And while I was there, it was like eight to 12 hours of therapy a day. And so it was basically boot camp into understanding what is my relationship with work? How do I not lose myself in sense of identity and work? And then how do I create the guardrails, coping mechanism, support network around myself so that I can go back into being a founder without having it take over my life and my well-being, right?

15:30And so I think for me, it's like, it's been an ongoing journey. It's something that I think I've had to do a lot of unlearning, right? I came into my career at like the height of hustle culture girl boss, like 2014. The narrative online was very much like work till you drop, no sleep, always working. The more you work, the more you do. Very much like celebrating the myth of meritocracy. And I followed that, right? I drank all of that Kool-Aid and was basically kind of taking that into my own life and really paid the price for it. And I think that it took experiencing the negative consequences of that to really realize, like, one, it wasn't sustainable.

16:12Like I literally ended up in rehab with what felt like no way back to a career with being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, where part of my diagnosis was actually from understanding that I had this severe addiction to work where I wasn't sleeping, pooping, eating, because I was seeing it as an opportunity cost to like one more email send. And it wasn't healthy to the people around me and the people that I was working with. Right. And so I think that for me, I had to do a lot of work to dismantle like how I thought about work, how I thought about time and energy to like come back into my career for reasons that I think felt really good, right?

16:47We're from a place of like just pure passion for the issue, like this dream of like a better for you, better for planet, better for culture, period care brands in a really mindful way. I also think for me, from a mental health perspective, I've really accepted that it's just like an ongoing journey. Like it's an every minute decision of like consciously, what am I doing? What am I choosing? I sleep like 10 hours a night now, which is like pretty unheard of as like a startup founder. And like, that's really non-negotiable for me, right? Like I have to sleep 10 hours a night. If I don't, I just feel like shit.

17:23I'm grumpy. I drink too much coffee, then I'm jittery, you know? So I think for me, it's an ongoing decision of like, how do I build my calendar, my life, my choices so that I can keep being the founder that I want to be and the person that I want to be. Yes. Sleep is not a waste of time and rest is not unproductive. And I really, really appreciate you opening up about these different chapters because the burnouts, the stress, all of that is also really important to know. I'm very excited to discuss more about the big wins for August. But first, I would like to take a moment to thank you for listening to this episode.

18:03Wherever you're listening now, go ahead and follow or subscribe to Shopify Masters and be sure to share this episode with a friend. We love reading your reviews, so make sure to leave some feedback for today's episode. Thank you so much. So now August can be found in Target and you've also had incredible partnerships with other businesses. What has been the key to developing those relationships? Yeah, so we launched in Target in early 2023, and we're in about 400 doors around the country. And I mean, it's been a big learning journey, right? I think that I'm not a first time founder, but this is my first time doing a CPG business.

18:46And there was a lot of learning to understand how do we build direct consumer. And I feel like it's basically learning a bunch of new things for a new whole sector of the business, right? Which is like, what is retail? How does retail work? It's very operationally. heavy, I would say like big shout out. We have a small team. We have seven people on our team total, including myself. And I think Target and being in retail is a huge operational undertaking that I could not do and not see possible without my co-founder who really runs a lot of the operational day to day and also our VP of ops, right, who previously worked at Target and also just brings so much experience and skills and just kind of making it happen.

19:30And so again, all that to say, I think Target entering retail has been really exciting. It's allowed us to connect with new customers who aren't online shoppers. Also going back to like period care is not a category that like consumers are trained to buy online, right? This is historically, and I think will always be the type of product that you maybe unexpectedly get your period and then run to the nearest store and kind of get the products that you're known to using, right? And it's not really a type of product like with makeup where you are more explorative about what kind of products you want to try.

20:03It's like you find the tampons and pads you like, and you're honestly probably using those for decades, right? And so I think for us, being in retail has allowed us to kind of tap into that known behavior of consumers, but also just be more convenient and affordable for people as well. We are an omni-channel business completely now, right? We have direct-to-consumer, retail, and then the last part of the business is also the B2B side. So we're the exclusive period partner for WeWork, Equinox, SoulCycle, around the world. And I think that that's been so exciting to be able to show up in ways where, you know, we're free to users.

20:36We're free to the gym members. We're free to people who work at WeWork offices across the U.S. and Canada. And so I would say that launching into Target really took our kind of understanding of the structure of the business to a new level, right? We're not just a direct-to-consumer brand. We're a period care brand that you can find online, in stores, on Amazon, and maybe at your school, in the school restrooms. Yeah, making it more accessible for the consumers as well and also at those different discovery points and truly helping them break their habits of purchases. One thing I love also is August and its branding, the fact that it does really stand out from a shelf.

21:17It is fun. It is playful. And it's something that started on the back of a napkin quite literally. So we'll love to hear your advice on how founders can actually start their branding exercise, keep the costs low, and create something that their customers and community will love and represent them as well. Yeah. I mean, I think that from a branding perspective, like there's not a lot that I know about building out supply chain or like, I'm not an expert in that. What I am confident in my own abilities on is like understanding brands. Like I love branding. I love the creative aspect of it. And I love talking about it.

21:58And so I would say that my advice was really like, I was so excited about it, so passionate about it. And I brought that to literally anybody who would listen. And it kind of goes back to the like community listening portion of our conversation, which was like, I basically took this Google Doc, this very messy Google Doc that laid out like beginning ideas for a brand book. And I talked to like any person who ran a marketing agency, worked in brand, was a graphic designer. And I just kept iterating on the ideas there and then would cold email the most creative people I knew to get their understanding of it.

22:30Right. So what you see in the brand today, I think is representative of like so many different touch points, conversations, feedback from, you know, there was this amazing creative director that I met when I was on a photo shoot for Adidas when I was like a teenager, Renee Tanner. And she was at the time a creative director at Adidas. And I had hit her up cold email over COVID. And I said, this is what I'm creating. What do you think? And she basically came in as like a mentor and advisor to really help formulate like, what are the colors? How does this come to life? To some of our earliest investors were Bobby Hundreds and Jeff Staple, founders of the streetwear, you know, modern day streetwear world, where I went to them and I said, I want to do what you did to streetwear with cotton t-shirts with cotton tampons, right?

23:13Creating a brand identity and community and meaning around a product that isn't in and of itself exciting. And honestly, like our name August comes from an email that Bobby Hundreds sent me where he said, here are the names that I almost named my son. And August was on there because it meant majestic dignity, right? And so I think for me, like, I probably only had one phone call with him ever, you know, in the last few years. But when I did talk to Bobby, it was like, this is what I'm thinking. It's really messy right now. It's an ugly combination of Google Docs. But this is the vision. And here's everything that I've learned.

23:49What do you think? And I think it was honestly spending like six to eight months with multiple phone calls a day with people that I really look up to who I could get advice from and just really absorbing any feedback and then taking those learnings, synthesizing it, and then working with a recently graduated student graphic designer to bring it to life, right? And honestly, that decision was simply because we did not have money to hire a big branding agency. You know, like when you talk to branding agencies, they're like, that'll be $80 ,000 for a logo. Or we recently have been working on our packaging.

24:23It's like$200 ,000 for packaging. And we're like, that is just not money we have. So it was like, we have less than 10K to bring all of this to life. Yeah. And I think that story is so special because a lot of the times we think mentorship is meeting once a week for years on end. But to your story and your point is, this is someone you looked up to, you've reached out, you really utilize that short time you had and to really get inspired and also work through some of those ideas. So it's very, very cool to hear. But yeah, of course, there's been so many different partners that you've picked, whether it is the graphic designer, the artist, but also venture capitalists.

25:07We got introduced because of Leah from Crave Beauty and how she's now starting Press Reset Ventures. Talk to us about some of those partnerships and also entering the VC world as well. Yeah, I mean, I mean it when I say that when I started raising for August, I did not even know what VC stood for. It's honestly a very, it's almost like a secret world of business that as a consumer you never think about, right? Like, even if you think about like the products that I use today, it's like, where was this made? Who funded it? I don't know. I just like the product, you know? And so I think that it's a whole new side of business that I really had to learn.

25:49And again, kind of similar on the mentorship side, it was constant conversations, introductions, community with founders, learning from founders, getting recommendations from people. But, you know, I think that for our experience with Raising BC, it was hard. And, you know, fundraising is kind of an ongoing thing. Like we're fundraising. We're still in that mode. But we've raised two rounds and Leah of Crave Beauty is a founder that I've looked up to for years. And I connected with honestly just to get her advice about raising capital. And she's bootstrapped, which is absolutely amazing, but, you know, was able to kind of support us through an initial investment.