517: We Made $400K In 6 Months Selling Sunscreen | Ava Chandler-Matthews and Bec Jefferd

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0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. I think we had 40 ,000 units in total for our first buy. That was with no customer, no website. We had no distribution. And sunscreen has an expiry date. if you don't sell it within two or three years, you have to throw it out. So there was a ticking time bomb of how long that stock could be around. Know what problem you're solving. Don't just put shit into market because you want to make some money. And again, look at the competitive landscape. If there's 10 other brands solving the exact same problem as you, it's pretty telling.

1:18You don't just push hard enough once at the start. You have to do it multiple every day. Is that the right retailer? Is that where we should be going? Our first international expansion, is that right? Is that where should we go? We're still doing that now. Before we dive in, I want to extend a warm invitation to join our thriving founder community. It's the perfect place to discover more insightful interviews aimed at helping you build, grow and scale your business. So don't forget to hit subscribe. Your support means the absolute world to us. Thank you so much for subscribing. Let's get stuck in today's discussion.

1:53Hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

2:08We're in the studio. Beck, Ava, thank you so much for joining us. I was going to say the first question that I usually ask is, how do you get your job? but we're changing that up. We're changing that up. You guys were waiting for it, right? You were waiting for it. Yeah. So the first question I'd now ask is, can you describe the first 60 days of ultraviolet? Can I? Like from day dot? Yeah, what do we count as? Yeah, I don't know. Time point zero. Time point zero probably day launch. No, I reckon from when you guys both sat down and said, you know what? Okay. We're going to do this. Okay. What did the first 60 days look like?

2:53The first 60 days, well, we obviously had conversations in the lead up and Bec was my boss. So I guess we – I don't know what I was thinking, proposing a business idea that would take us both out of the jobs we were currently in. We obviously had a good relationship but I must have known that you would have been receptive to it. Yeah, and we said we should do this and then, you know, Bec was at a very different stage of her life. she had two small children mortgage I was late 20s um nothing you know just paying rent in an apartment in South Yarra um and so that was you know day dot and then I think there was a bit of time in between that first conversation and the second one probably not much maybe a week or so and then it was a bit more of a serious lunch and it was like okay let's think about how we could potentially do this and then so that lunch is day one is that that's what you're counting yeah i guess so day one seven days after the initial scoping conversation yeah yeah and then um we spent probably the next 60 days in beck's living room um on a whiteboard like just ideating the brand and looking at name everything from names to products to concepts of what we're positioning how much money we'd need product cost of goods targets retailer distribution plans how much money we were willing to earn or not earn and for how long everything we really dug into everything yeah that was and this was still like forming I guess it's hard to count is that the first 60 days because at any one of those days we could have both pulled out and said actually this is not for me so like every single day was another step towards are we serious are we serious and the more that idea formed and maybe it's testament to the kind of people well definitely me like I needed to see it working out on paper think of all of the things and then I could really jump in.

5:09So there was no commitment from either of us at that point in time, but it was for me. Yeah. Okay. So you launched in 2019? Mm-hmm. That was 2016. Okay. All that activity. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So it took three years to bring the product to life. Two and a half. Yeah, two and a half. Two and a half. Okay. You both worked together at Mecca. You guys had an unfair advantage. Yeah, we did. Right? But that's what you go with, right? Like you play a game that you think you're going to win. That's business, right? We had an unfair advantage, but we'd also spent our entire careers getting us to a point where we had an unfair advantage.

5:47And credit to you guys. Yeah, industries. Credit to you guys, yeah. But yes, we definitely knew the ropes, I think, a lot better than some other founders do. And maybe that wasn't a good thing. Maybe it was a great thing. Yeah, I think we knew what questions we needed to have answers to. So in that first ideating 60 days, we knew the pillars that we had to fill, but there was still a whole lot that we didn't know. Now, five years and a half years later, there were lots of things we didn't even think to workshop and talk about, but we knew enough to get going. And I think an unfair advantage or expertise coming to fruition or, you know, a passion for something that had been proven.

6:34Like these are kind of all launching off points that three or two and a half years after that came to the launch date. So, yeah, there's definitely a lot of time, not just 60 days before we got to launch. Yeah, got you. But two and a half years is a long time. It is. Right? Like for me, when I created Foundry, I had extreme naivety, no idea about publishing, print, digital, marketing, product not even about entrepreneurship right it was extreme naivety and that took me I'd say about six to nine months to go yep I'm going to do this purchase the software produce the magazine find someone on the equivalent of Upwork yeah and whatever and it was a disaster but I still launched it so embarrassing made five dollars and fifty cents the first day two subscribers but back to you guys like two and a half years what did that what happened in those two and a half years, especially around the product development phase because that's a long time.

7:32Yeah. So we obviously – we had the ideation session, like a really thorough business planning. We then – we needed to leave our employer. Like we couldn't – we had to get out of it. You couldn't do it on the side. No. No, we didn't feel right about that. No. Okay. So we, you know, quit our well-paying jobs and left. And that was also, you know, the commitment was building. Yes. And so we didn't start the product development process until after that point. So there was a very clean break. And then it takes a long time. And sunscreens, our products, we call them skin screen, a combination of skincare and sunscreen.

8:11But that sunscreen part is really tough in Australia to get a TGA approved. So the Therapeutic Goods Administration has to validate that an SPF 50 really means something robust. So I think too, our idea wasn't about launching a brand with sunscreen. It was really about changing a category. So sunscreen had traditionally been in mass channels, so available in supermarkets or drugstores and pharmacies. And consequently, all of the base formulations were suited to that low cost environment. There was not a thought about making things feel nice on your face. it was all formulated to be or not all but mostly formulated to be easy to apply on your body in the summer months that you take to the beach in packaging that you didn't really care about because it was at the bottom of a beach bag or on vacation.

9:01And you're going to pay five dollars for it. And lowest yeah it was the lowest cost formulating environment. So the first challenge and why that two years started to ebb away so quickly was trying to find a formulation base that would meet our premium beauty aspirations for this brand and when you're trying to change a category there's they didn't exist those formulations so we really had to work very hard in finding what we could start with and then really adjust and tweak and work on elevating those formulations so that they were appropriate for our vision of transforming the category and that's just the goop in the middle you then try and overlay onto that packaging that's rightfully going to sit on the shelves of a prestige beauty retailer and in someone's vanity that looked elegant and beautiful.

9:49That was another whole product development process. And then obviously the branding, the tone of voice, the language, when you're creating something that hasn't existed before and wasn't at a level before, that had to overlay. So there were lots of streams working together, but it wasn't like going to a contract manufacturer, sourcing a formulation, and chucking a label on it and putting it out to market. And also we were still working pretty much full-time. I was full-time, we were four days in this period. So I guess it gave us the windows that we had to work on this were, you know, Bex one day a week and my after work on weekends, et cetera, where I was kind of working on the brand development.

10:32So it wasn't, we kind of took a, you know, you hear entrepreneurs say, you know i just dove in and you know probably quite similar to you just figured it out you did it in a short period we were a little bit more cautious and i think we you know we probably needed to be like you couldn't just chuck it all in not have a job for nine months or a year while we were working through this and i and i don't know if we had have been full-time i don't know how much we could have truncated that late time like maybe we could have shaved six months off it Yeah, true. We definitely couldn't have done it in three months.

11:06No. And so how long can you go without any income before you then have a business where you're not going to earn an income? Yeah. It was probably a minimum of 18 months, I'd say, based on what we needed to do. And then, you know, we had to build a website and all of those things that we had never done before. Yeah. And when it's just the two of you, you really, you know, are relying on what skills can I scrape from the bottom of the barrel and try and mould into a role. Yeah. Got you. So you guys did leave your job. So what time period was that? That was early 2017. Once we'd established that we were going to do this.

11:42So we had six months in the middle of 2016 to the beginning of 2017. We had six months we worked on the business plan. We stress tested the idea. We shared it with a few kind of trusted people. No, not colleagues. People we weren't telling anyone. Okay. We were very, you know. Stealth. Yeah, very stealth. Okay. We just didn't want any – we wanted feedback, but we didn't want anything to kind of stop us at this point that we were still kind of a bit starry-eyed about the concept. It's not fully formed either. No. I think we needed to think it all through. Yeah. So we just shared it with a couple of people we thought were smart in business.

12:21Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'd love to go a bit deeper on the formulation side because that's the part that I think a lot of people outwards looking in go, So creating the brand's fun, but creating a product that is truly differentiated in the marketplace. You guys talk about disrupting a category or reimagining a category. That's not easy and that's quite intimidating. How did you go about finding a form, to work on the formulation? And did you look outside of Australia? Did you have industry contacts? What did that look like? What did that process look like? Like, how do you even test that stuff? Like, there's a whole, yeah, like kind of a quite an intimidating process.

13:03Well, and I guess where we started is very different to where we are now. We didn't really think – we'd only worked with contract manufacturers in previous roles in product development. So, that was kind of our, you know, that's what we knew what to do. We knew who the good – there's only a handful of TGA-approved manufacturers in Australia. and we'd worked with most of the big ones through various jobs. Sorry. And there were a couple that Nika had blacklisted and so we were like this is a good place for us to start. We know there's such a clear line in the sand here. There's going to be no questions, oh, have they taken this formula?

13:46You know, because we had a lot of, you know, Intel working at a retailer. so we very um you know carefully and i guess strategically chose who we were going to work with and it was where there was no overlap um which is hard in an australian beauty landscape you know there's not a huge as i said there's not a huge amount of manufacturers and there's even less who are approved to make sunscreen so we worked with them and then you know there was a younger female chemist in this manufacturer um and we kind of felt she got the vision and she was you know kind of fresh out of me at the time yeah was probably doing some of the more innovative stuff that we'd seen um and you know we we kind of developed a good relationship with this manufacturer and we were able to kind of take work on their formulations with them and with her and it wasn't just as beck mentioned before it's very functional sunscreen well it's passed it's passed spf 50 plus it's passed uva testing it's passed water resistance and even though it is a whitening greasy mess on your face like it's still it ticks the boxes so what else do you want it wasn't those kinds of conversations we were having it was more about what skincare active can we add here let's make this lighter let's give this a glow and she kind of really got it so that was you know the first person that we that we worked worked with I would say too a key because I we do get asked this question a bit like where do you start how how do you take those first steps I think and also a really important first step that we don't even think about mentioning because it was so obvious to us is know what good looks like and whilst we didn't see what good looked like in our space but we knew what a beautiful moisturizer looked like and we knew what a great primer looked like and we knew what um you know a glow serum looked like and it was combining those attributes with a sun protection element that we were really looking for but i guess we were the ultimate consumers like we knew what we would put on our faces and what we wouldn't if it was a greasy white mess so i think there's a lot to be said for that you might feel like oh i'm getting into this just because i love the industry but that's actually really important and and I think honing that knowledge of what good looks like is really is a really critical part so that then you are going to have to come to a point and we do now we have to approve formulations on the fly you've got five minutes because it's got to go into production and if you didn't know what good looks like you'd be constantly second guessing yourself you wouldn't be able to make decisions you wouldn't be able to move forward so I do think really honing that base level of understanding was really an unspoken important part of that product development process.

16:34I admire your courage because you've got this kind of runway where you've got to launch this thing, but you've got to make the product right too. And you've got MOQs. Can we talk through those logistics if that's okay? Like what was the MOQ? What was the starting capital? What did that look like? You've got to work on the website. You've got to look at the brand. I'm looking at the product now. Did it look like this? no no um so yeah and that was why i think we needed to spend that time up front on really thinking through all of those elements and then you know it was with our families that we had to make that leap you don't just jump in isolation into something as crazy as starting a business you know i had i still have a husband um he had to be really supportive of you know one income you know, this is really risky.

17:21This is probably going to take a lot of my heart and soul, which it does now. And he was really supportive of that. I mean, you met Dion partway through the process. He had to kind of get on board pretty quickly. But yeah, they were really supportive. And in terms of MOQs, I guess, you know, a story about MOQs, they feel quite insurmountable when you first investigate launching a brand. And I guess because we'd worked with product development before we were less intimidated but there was still a a point when we launched and we had five products wow and an moq we have five yeah yeah five five products okay not just one and and typical moqs in a regulated product like sunscreen are 10 000 units per skew wow so we we negotiated a little bit i think we had 40 000 units in total for our first buy and that was with no customer no website we had a warehouse and we were determined to kind of set things up we had no distribution and and we had a coffee with someone else who like a founder like a beautiful founder that was giving us some time that we shared with her we were buying 40 ,000 units of stock she nearly fell off a chair and up until that point I don't think we'd really thought through that the physical space of what 40 ,000 units would look like and this is someone who was successful in our eyes and had done a really good job and she was really horrified and then I think we thought oh shit yeah actually it is a lot and maybe like and then and I think only at that point then you start to think what if like what if we never move it and sunscreen has an expiry date if you don't sell it within two or three years you have to throw it out so there was a ticking time bomb of how long that stock could be around and so I think you know there's a little bit of naivety as you go through the process but there's moments like that one where you you try and imagine what that physically looks like it wouldn't have fit in either of our living rooms combined and you were very certain like one of the things we budgeted for when we were doing our like cash flow and you know how much money we'd need um which you you are who you've asked about um you know one of the things beck was very clear on was like i'm not having this in our houses like it's where we have to get a proper pick and pack warehouse at 3pl so that was one of the and you know it was set the tone for a lot of structure of becks embedded in the business but from a very early stage um there was definitely it was never there and i was probably like oh i don't care put offer in i'll put it in my spare room but well that's how people usually do it i didn't i didn't i don't as beck said we didn't we didn't want 40 000 units and i think we'd also seen you know we'd been in a retailer that was doing phenomenally well so i think we were kind of like yeah 10 000 units of something walking out the door didn't feel like a big deal to us but they also at that point would have had what 60 or 80 60 retail doors to for that stock plus a booming online business um so i think we probably were a bit naive in terms of that but i it didn't feel scary to either of us and i think we've been used to working with larger volumes but i guess there were probably were a few moments where we were kind of like well and and then what are we going to do how did that event what happened to that 40 000 units of stock we ended up placing our first replenishment order within six months of launching so i think that's when we thought okay we don't need to worry about moving those 40 000 units of stock We now need to worry about affording the second buy and keeping this business going, which is, you know, a different problem.

21:06So, and in terms of cash, I think, you know, 40 ,000 units, you can do the math, like say it's$5 a unit,$5 to$10 a unit. You know, we knew we were in for a couple of hundred thousand dollars each. And I think that was really, I think it was great. We didn't have to put in a cent after that point, really. we that funded our first buy I was really adamant we need to buy two rounds of stock and if we can afford to buy two rounds of stock as well as a website you know trademarks whatever else we needed that would be enough to get us going and it actually was so I didn't want us to be in a position where all we had was enough to buy the first round and then we were like oh what do we do now so if we had two rounds and I knew that the cash flow would be fine to sustain us and I'd say to we launched first with an online our own website and ultraviolet.com.au and with that website what it means is that we were getting cash instantly and we could we had a higher margin so from a profitability point of view online and this is 2019 things are different now we we could really get some scale quickly and that were funding came back into the business to help fund those subsequent rounds of stock.

22:23And it was really important to have that instant cash flow. I think sometimes you get enamored with a retailer and you can't appreciate the margin that they're going to take and the impact that that's going to have to the profitability. That is your fuel. And I think being really protective of a good margin product, having a strong e-com business, and we've always had a metric to keep e-com at about 25 % of our total sales. And obviously in year one it was 90 percent um that's come down over time but it still is a really healthy chunk of our overall total mix of business and it really does fuel the cash of the business which is important yeah got you so you've got to tell me about launch plan guys i've got some research that you launched you know mama mia helped you yes in a big way but talk talk about the launch plan because a lot of people you know that's a big sticking point right like this is a big risk right like you know i i didn't take on that risk when i started founding it cost me about three grand and i was doing it while i was working on my job on the side i was earning 50 grand a year in it support so like i admire your guys courage yeah yeah well the launch plan was you know it was we had um i've you know we've both been in beauty for a long time i've been in beauty both my parents are creative so I've kind of grown up in surrounded by editors and um you know and so we had some good relationships uh with some you know really a you know top level beauty editors and one of whom was writing a story in Stellar magazine which is a weekend magazine has the money like they're the kind of publications you really want to be in because of the eyeballs they're going to you know two million people versus i don't know 40 000 um and she said look i can write something about you i've only got space on this this day um yeah it was like early december and we we weren't ready to launch we had you know we had product we didn't have product we didn't have no we we probably had a bare bones of a website and so we thought we've just got to make this happen like go with this website go get something up don't care what it is so we kind of begged so that it was available when the article came out yeah so we kind of begged borrowed stole we told our manufacturer we didn't steal we didn't steal no we didn't steal we did beg and borrow yeah we did beg and borrow and we we said to our manufacturer look we need press samples um like can you just give us a run of a hundred can you just don't care if they're you know if they're you know not in the big tanks they can be in the little tanks that's fine just we need 100 units to put on a website and we created these little packs um and kind of sold them at a value I guess because the brand hadn't officially launched and um it was like a lip gloss I think it was just a lip gloss in one product one of the facial skus and you could buy one of those um and it was so that that was what we allocated as our press stock so we actually weren't really allowed to sell it but whatever it was enough years ago that no one's going to be coming after us um we weren't allowed to or even though it ticked all the boxes it had all been tested the same product that was going into the final launch stuff so it was all very safe i will say that um but we weren't theoretically allowed to sell it so we just made these little packs we had these little makeup bags and we put them on a bare bones like landing page basically um and then this article came out two months before we actually launched the brand and we sold through them in i don't know a couple of days um and so that kind of and then from there we started getting we built a wait list so we started building a wait list i don't know and we said at that point is what we started building an instagram i think we had an instagram as well i think that was kind of around that time we turned it on i think by the time we launched um the brand we probably had a couple of maybe a thousand people on a wait list and a thousand people on instagram which felt like a lot or maybe a bit more and then from there it was just it was really just seeding like we were doing something you know as it was as we said before quite disruptive the packaging looked like skincare product it was like serum bottles um you know airless pump tubes it wasn't just like a squeezy tube or a big pump pack sunscreen so the packaging looked different it was very the packaging was vibrant the colors were you know neon and and blue and we kind of knew that at the time in 2018 2019 it was that shelfy kind of instagram time and we knew it would stand out on shelfies and pictures of you know flat lays on instagram whatever else was happening on the platform at that time and sent it to all of our beauty editor friends sent it to any kind of influences we knew or had had any sort of relationship with um and that was kind of the launch plan it wasn't uh there was no kind of it was it was very traditional press gifting influencer but not paid no no paid influencer it was all very organic um and it was all very local Australia so and Mama Mia did write a fantastic article calling us you know a cult future cult brand um and Lee Campbell who is a a friend of the brand wrote this amazing article and they also had a um mama mia you beauty facebook group and it was very there was a lot of um activity going on in that facebook group it was when facebook group beauty facebook groups were like at their prime so they might have only had 10 000 people in there but they were very active and commented and wrote and you know gave feedback and so people were talking about it in this facebook group as well and so it kind of at that point that was it that was the start Lee wrote about on the day we launched we were getting sales from people we knew but then you know after an hour we didn't know the people anymore and um you know it was very exciting and yeah I think it was just a kind of a great it was a great start and gave us a lot of confidence um and then we've kind of yeah obviously invested a lot more you You know, we kind of turned on performance marketing and worked with an agency on, you know, Meta and Google and all those, but it was so bare bones.

28:46Like it was, and we had no, we didn't really have that much money. So it was very, very, like, I think we probably spent$1 ,000. We used those 40 ,000 units though. We were giving away product. Yes. We gave away a lot of product. Yeah, to seed. Yeah. And, you know, when you've got good product, you can rely on that as a really strong kind of marketing tactic. And we kind of, I guess at that point, we had some confidence that we had good product because we had good feedback. Yeah. So look, it's interesting. There's a common thread I find when I speak to e-commerce founders and brand builders is the product, right?

29:25The product first and foremost, if you get that right, it flies, right? And it's not a Facebook hack. It's not an Instagram hack. It's not one big influencer that's going to blow you up. The product just moves. And, you know, you talk about performance marketing. People have challenges with performance marketing. We all do, right? But all it does is amplify, right? And so it's from what I'm hearing, you know, you could – there's no crazy launch tactics. You use traditional media. You've got some great contacts, right? But what really worked was spending that three years getting the product right.

30:02That's exactly right. So you sharpen the axe. Yeah. And I think it speaks to, we started from a place where we had inherent respect for the consumer. So much so that we spent those two and a half years developing product, mostly for her. Mostly it's a female audience. But really, not just the respect for them in the product development process, But, you know, we were not out buying followers. We were not out shoving a label on something so that we could quickly meet a deadline. There was genuine, I think, we had to craft this. The packaging was expensive. Like we went to a Korean manufacturer.

30:40So we weren't taking shortcuts with cheap packaging that was going to fall apart. And I think you can tell of those type of foundations. You know, you make some big important decisions up front and you build from there. So, and I think the consumer could tell, you know, there was care and thoughtfulness put into that product. I know a lot of people would say that, but we've seen other, you know, copycats where it's not the case. And I think it's having that inherent respect for the consumer that is really important. Yeah. So talk to me about the third person branding. When did that start? We, we've kind of touched on this, but we came into the category where it was very seasonal.

31:27It was very cancer focused, you know, especially in Australia, right? We have the highest rates of skin cancer in the world. You know, our UV index is phenomenally high. And it was very, very, you know, the messaging was very cancer, cancer, cancer. and we knew that what resonated with us as consumers and as women was, you know, it's not like no 20-, 30-year-old thinks they're going to get cancer. I mean, you don't think about that stuff, right, unless you've got a history of it in your family, in which case you're more aware. But what impacted us was that the sun and UV rays are the number one cause of premature ageing.

32:11You know, 80 % of premature aging was caused by UV rays. So that was something that we were kind of like, no one's really talking about this and therefore needs to be worn every day. No one's talking about this. Everyone's kind of pushing cancer, pushing summer, pushing beach, vacay, whatever it is. And we knew we needed to talk to the customer in a way that made sense to them and their lifestyle. And a way to do this was through this concept of VI, which you know violet the brands ultraviolet it's the violet spelt like a female name it was actually for a trademark it wasn't it wasn't super intentional strategic on our side it was we couldn't trademark ultraviolet without the tea that extra tea so we were like let's create this character around by and violent she's become something we use in education and it's just another way of talking about the brand it's not just us as founders because, you know, we're not celebrities.

33:08We're not Selena Gomez. I've got a funny buy story, actually. I think we're still realising what power there can be in this character. We thought at the time, this could be a bit of fun and one of our brand values is to really find the fun in everything that we do. So something that's not fun is writing an IM when you're going for investment. So when you're going to the market to seek an investor, which we were doing this time, you know, just over 12 months ago. And an IM, if ever you've seen one, is the most boring document you've ever laid eyes on. And I think, you know, we were really struggling with this, you know, this document doesn't feel like us.

33:51How does our brand essence come through here? And I remember sending Ava an email about, okay, we need to jazz up our bio pages because there's, you know, we need to talk about the team. There's Ava, myself. We were also featuring our CFO, Emma. And I'm like, do we say like what fun things we like to do on the weekend? How do we make this a little bit more fun? And Ava was like, oh God, that's even boring. I think we need to add Vi into the leadership team. We're like, Vi doesn't exist. So we ended up on something as serious as an IM putting on our Vi-O page, the two founders, our CFO and Vi, our chief skin screen officer.

34:31and then we were like well we need to have a bit more fun with this so then Vi started to pop up on various pages and making rude or like inappropriate comments so about the and we ended up having such a laugh with it our bankers were absolute sports because they'd obviously never seen a fictional character appear on these documents but they let us go with it and it really did bring out a smile in people that read it and it really we had we had responses back where people had done, you know, pictures of the product in situ and tried to kind of have a bit of fun back with it. So I think we're still realizing what power Vi can add.

35:10We would never have thought she would have been a character in an IM, but, you know, she can definitely, she's starting to appear at a time that's appropriate, but I guess it's having that brand confidence. And also we now have a global audience. We have lots of things to tell that global audience and not everyone's as educated as Australians are because of you know slip slop slap has a lot to a lot of good things to answer for in building a great awareness of sun protection in Australia a lot of countries still don't have that or they have a tanning culture or you know tanning beds solariums so bringing out Vi as our lead communication tool in those markets sometimes isn't appropriate but in a market like Australia where we've got a lot of the basics down pat already, we can start to have a bit more fun.

35:55And I think it's really great when you are, when you're ideating a brand, like, so I guess a lot of founders just focus on the logo. What's the logo? You know, we have a logo, we have a monogram, which is our U and our V. We have Vi, we have our color system, we have our tone of voice. I think you need to have a lot of elements to bring out a multi-dimensional brand and Vi is just one of them that we like to have a bit of fun with yeah hey founder fam i want to take a quick break from the show to tell you about something we're really excited about our black friday offer because this black friday deal is different if you're listening right now chances are that you want to start a business of your own or you want to scale up your existing business and if you've ever said i'll start one day or maybe i need more help one day founder plus was built to help you make it happen we have a 43 step program with over 600 lessons taught by real multi-million dollar e-commerce founders to help you start and scale your own e-commerce brand and for this week only you can join founder plus for just$299 a year it's normally$499 and you can lock in that price for life that's$200 off every single year backed by our 90-day money-back guarantee picture this with the help of founder plus you could be running your own black friday sale this time next year or you could be smashing it out of the park smashing all-time records so don't miss out this deal closes soon start building your business today at founder.com forward slash plus that's p l u s or click the link in the show notes all right now let's jump back in the show i'd love to explore the branding piece more like the colors really cool like it's it's traditionally a boring product you guys have really taken it to a whole nother level and it it looks amazing like i said my offline like you know my partner she's like do you have any samples like i'm really sorry i'm gonna have any brownie points so thank you for bringing that in but yeah like how did you guys work that out what what advice would you have to founders from a branding perspective around colors around packaging around tone of voice around you know the third person branding like that's what frank did really well as well right like so yeah talk me through that um well we worked first of all like i don't suggest founders get onto canva and try and do it themselves like it is a very you know it is a very it's an art yeah um and you need to find someone that has done it before and understands you know if you're creating a physical product you need to work with someone who understands and depending on where you want this product to live on a shelf online wherever there are certain considerations like you need a product lock up you know so you need someone to think through all of those things and product lock up is you know the product name its function where the logo sits where the monogram if you've got one sits if there's descriptive copy and that needs to then be consistent for all of your products but it is so first of all find someone who knows what they're doing and if it's a physical product knows understands finish art because that's you know again printing something on paper is very different to printing a 3d printing something in a 3d um you know actual tangible product so find someone who knows what they're doing um and someone that ideally gets you as a founder so we worked with someone who'd worked we worked with before understood us you know there are a few things I was very clear about in my head that I kind of wanted to get through and you know one of these things was the use of color and obviously Beck and I were aligned on that and um we wanted to kind of nod to uh you know if you look at a lot of sunscreen brands it's blue and yellow yellow for sun blue for sea um pretty basic yeah and we wanted to I guess nod to that um you know we're still a sunscreen product at the end of the day we can't completely abandon the roots of the category and so we kind of you know initially it was like do we do navy and then I kind of was looking and there was this Eve Klein blue which is um it's a very vibrant blue it's also called Marjorelle blue um I can't even it's so pigmented and it's kind of I don't even know how to describe just google it if you um eve so it like eve samuel and um that is a very hard color in retrospect it is very hard color to to print you know you do get a lot of packaging supplies that go either like the royal blue side or kind of a bit too i don't know just yeah navy even so anyway it was a tricky color to choose but it did allow us to stand out and then the the highlight colors that you see um you know the neons pastel neons are kind of a bit of a nod to that the zinx that we you know put on our faces at the beach so there are some kind of really subtle uh nods to to the heritage of of the category into like what we were actually trying to create but it first and foremost for us needed to feel elevated and like skincare not like sun care um you know colors have a specific use like there might be one color that we use to denote the hydrating products so there's like a hierarchy in terms of um and a clear navigational kind of system for these colors as well they're not just randomly chucked on products so this is what i mean when there's a it might just seem like oh they've used pretty colors that stand out um and at the time everything in the market was black and white you know by rado was very big in beauty or Millennial Pink Glossier had launched in 2014.

41:41That was obviously, you know, a major beauty brand. And so a lot of brands were copying that and we just wanted to be so different to that. But, yes, so that was a really – it didn't actually take that long because, as I said, working with someone who knew what they were doing. Yeah, and you just worked with like a freelancer, not an agency. Yeah, exactly.

42:04Unless you've raised cash already, don't work with an agency it'll set you back you know 200 grand 150 to 200 grand um find a designer ask around someone who's worked on branding and understands how things need to kind of look in situ and I think with those building blocks I look back at that process and it was surprisingly short we were real I was really guarding myself for like when this is you know we've both done branding and artwork and all kinds of things before and you think when you get the chance to do that for your own brand I am going to be so precious about that thing I'm going to make sure it's absolutely perfect and I think it was really surprising that having that you know that that everything's got to be absolutely right doesn't have to take you three years if you nail it straight away with good foundations of three rounds yeah it was three rounds the first round was a bit more purple maybe the lock-up wasn't where we and when we talk about a lot I can show you what i mean but you know it's like the logos at the front then it's this copy then it's the monogram then it's that copy in there yeah and there's also with sunscreen there's regulatory stuff you need to factor in so it's not just like a moisturizer that you can say whatever you want on the packaging you can't make claims you can't say a lot of things um that you might like to from you know as a marketer and as a as brand builders you might want to make all these like amazing claims which are actually true but you can't say those things because it's regulated like and you have to say boring things as well like is this a cream or or a lotion like that doesn't you know float anyone's boat but you have to say it and you can't say any of that bigger or smaller than certain font style so yeah we were also quite hamstrung but even with that it was three rounds and we were yeah that's interesting and it brings me back to kind of my own experience when it comes to building brands um i think if you find a really good designer like a really good freelancer or an agency and they just get it yeah it doesn't take that long it's not like you like the first draft should be like 80 70 at worst from from my experience yeah and then you can get it done really fast like yeah i found that as well but the brief's got to be clear yes yeah yeah but if you work with someone that's talented you can take it pretty far pretty quickly the other thing i'd say is there's two of us there's two founders we had got to be on the same page I mean and and also like Ava is definitely more um you still are you're managing the design and the brand side of the business so your opinion counted for maybe 51 % until I was 49 but I think also being clear about that how are we going to make this decision and and you know we both better really like it so I think even more testament that only took three rounds I don't remember having conversations with you about the direction i just you read my mind you must have liked the first round enough where you were like oh okay i'm not gonna kick but you'd hint it like we talked about the concepts that we wanted to see in it and i was i was on board with that yeah yeah yeah and i wouldn't have agreed if i didn't like no of course you're not gonna put something into the world that you don't think is good no you guys you guys you guys are like Like one thing I've really taken away from this conversation is you guys really went for it.

45:20You guys didn't just dip your toe in the water. That's how we roll, Nathan. Yeah, you guys really went for it. We still are really going for it. I love that. That's business, right? That's entrepreneurship, right? That's right. I remember a mentor once said to me, you know what, Nathan, if someone's not coming close to like, you know, it's not working out or losing it all, they're probably not pushing hard enough. Yeah. Right? I also think too the add to that is you don't just push hard enough once at the start you have to do it multiple every day our first retailer is that the right retailer is that where we should be going our first international expansion is that right is that where should we go we're doing that we're still doing that now yeah and you don't make you don't make every you don't get every decision right like our first international market probably shouldn't have been what our first international market was but we learned we learned yeah and it was a way for us to say we're global um but yeah and you just can't over necessarily overthink every single decision you just kind of have to go with it and realize that there are some fuck-ups you can fix later yeah I think that's absolutely right and and I'd say the one thing as a founder is you have to be excellent at making decisions and and know which decisions are the ones that need more uh more diligence more thought more time and which ones you just have to make because you're slowing things down and also being which lane am I in to make decisions without having to work with Ava and which ones do we both have to come together on I think the ability to make good decisions and good quality decisions at the right pace is critical and that's a learned skill sure you don't have that and a practice skill it is yeah 100 so I have to ask you guys more about some product stuff around finding a winning product and knowing you're onto something what advice would you give to founders there like that are looking to start a physical product maybe not in the beauty space or in the beauty space like what from your experience like you guys obviously know product development really well like what would you say to founders i think a bit what i said before about knowing what good looks like i think you also have to know the competitive landscape um so for us probably the the worst thousand dollars we've ever spent but was actually valuable was buying a report on the sunscreen industry in Australia because at the time all that told us is what was selling in grocery and pharmacy.

47:43So there were some hints there in terms of what not to do, but that was our competition at the time. It was mass market. So we still had to be aware of that and we still had to understand that people, what were consumers previously buying that we wanted them to trade up to or buy into. So I think you really have to know what is that consumer? How are they going to put that money on the counter or online? And what are they actually going to get? And what does that mean compared to what they could otherwise spend that cash on? I think having a really good hard look at yourself and saying, if you're not the consumer, getting someone who really is.

48:22You know, I know a lot of people working on Gen Z brands because that's a really growing space. Like, don't rely on your own instinct. get some kids around sit in front of them and ask them would you put this in your pocket of your school dress and bring it out proud you know in a way that you know you're really happy to share with your friends and um you know and online your online community so i think if you if you inherently get that you will make better choices on when you can see a product that you're ready to approve we're going through at the moment really evaluating our range for a new market and we are absolutely immersing ourselves in that new market.

49:00Even though I feel like we think we know it, we are going so deep in terms of what are primers in that market saying on their website about priming claims? If we want to say we've got priming benefits, how are we stacking up against the market-leading primer? As an example, have we touched and felt that product and do we know what that looks like and feels like on the skin such that we are confident of making a claim with our product. So I think it's do the work. Do the work. Know what the competitive landscape is and be really honest with would someone put money on the table for this product that you're presenting?