In short
The Foundr Podcast Episode Notes
Episode Title
558: She Made $100K in 90 Days Selling Sunscreen | Tori Gill
Podcast Overview
- Host: Nathan Chan
- Guest: Tori Gill, Founder of Sun & Daughter
- Theme: Entrepreneurship success stories, market gap identification, rapid business growth.
Episode Summary In this episode, Tori Gill shares her entrepreneurial journey from being a barber to launching a successful sunscreen brand, Sun & Daughter, achieving $100K in sales within just three months. She discusses her unique approach to identifying market gaps, building a relatable brand, and leveraging social media for marketing.
Key Discussions Transition from Barbering to Entrepreneurship
- Initial Thoughts: Tori was dissatisfied with her job as a barber and sought a business that did not require her to be physically involved in every sale.
- Market Research: Identified a gap in the sunscreen market for children, particularly concerning gentle, non-chalky formulations.
Brand Development
- Name and Branding: The brand name "Sun & Daughter" came from a personal moment on the beach, emphasizing familial connections.
- Brand Identity: Focused on creating a fun and vibrant brand image, moving away from traditional, bland packaging in the sunscreen market.
Marketing Strategy
- Social Media Leverage: Tori utilized Instagram to build anticipation for her product launch. The brand garnered significant attention through engaging content, particularly reels.
- First-Day Sales: Launched on Boxing Day with a strong push on social media, resulting in $4,000 in sales on the first day.
Product Development Challenges
- Manufacturing Hurdles: Faced difficulties with minimum order quantities (MOQs) and regulatory approvals for sunscreen in Australia.
- Product Testing: Worked with various manufacturers to ensure the product quality met her expectations and brand values.
Insights on Business Growth Sales Techniques
- Urgency and Incentives: Tapping into urgency (limited-time offers) boosted sales.
- Cross-Selling: Introduced complementary products like hats and brushes to increase average order value, which enhanced customer experience.
Founder-Led Content
- Personal Branding: Tori emphasizes the importance of being personally involved in the brand narrative, sharing her day-to-day experiences, which fosters trust with her audience.
- Authenticity: Relatable content often outperforms highly polished marketing materials.
Future Plans
- Expansion: Launching additional products, including a body wash that aligns with the brand's mission to provide safe, natural skincare for children.
- Continued Growth: Aiming to grow Sun & Daughter into a comprehensive children’s skincare brand.
Key Takeaways
- Identify Market Gaps: Success in entrepreneurship often starts with recognizing and addressing unmet needs in the market.
- Build a Relatable Brand: Personal stories and authenticity can significantly enhance customer engagement and trust.
- Leverage Social Media: Use platforms like Instagram and TikTok strategically to build an audience and promote products.
- Continuous Learning: Engage with communities and courses that offer guidance and support throughout the entrepreneurial journey.
Conclusion Tori Gill's story is a testament to how identifying a market need, coupled with personal passion and strategic marketing, can lead to rapid business success. Her journey reflects the entrepreneurial spirit and emphasizes the importance of community support and authentic branding in today’s market.
Additional Resources
- Join the Foundr Community: [foundr.com/foundrplustrial](https://foundr.com/foundrplustrial)
- Follow Foundr on Social: Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn
Call to Action If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more about entrepreneurship, consider rating and reviewing the podcast. Stay tuned for more incredible stories and insights from successful founders.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:01Hey founder fam, I want to talk to you about something super exciting. We're officially partnered with OmniSend, the email marketing and SMS platform built specifically for e-commerce founders. We've been recommending OmniSend to founder students for a while now because it just works. Whether you're launching your first store or you're scaling to seven figures, it really helps you automate your marketing and get real results. Did you know on average, OmniSend customers make$68 for every$1 they spend, which is an insanely good return on investment. And because you're part of the founder community, you get 50 % off your first three months with the code founder50.
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 would be lying if I'd said that I was never really looking to do something. I work as a barber, so I always wanted to do something where how can I make money where I'm not the person cutting hair? I started to like really look into sunscreen and realized that I couldn't find one that wasn't like thick or white or chalky and I was like surely there is another solution to this so it's been hard I could like be sending emails at the park pushing one child on the swing the other one's playing in the sandpit and I'm sending an email but I also just do it when the kids are sleeping probably why I've got bags under my eyes but yeah I think you just make it work our first day we made four thousand dollars in sales I was happy with one.
1:28I was like, if I sell one, I'll be happy. Eventually, hopefully, I can cut down on cutting people's hair and then hopefully one day go all in. Hopefully, I outgrow my spare bedroom.
1:42Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.
1:56We've got Tori Gill. She's the founder of a company called Sun and Daughter, a brilliant sunscreen brand. And she's a member of the Founder Plus community. And she recently won a grant that we ran an incredible community event around. And Tori was the winner. And she was voted by our community for her brand, Sun and Daughter, this incredible sunscreen brand. She only launched two months ago. she's on track to do over a hundred thousand dollars in three months which is absolutely insane with this sunscreen brand tell us a little bit about son and daughter how'd you come up with this amazing idea so it probably started two years ago and I was on the beach we're in Manly me and my family and I have two kids but I just had one at the time and I was putting sunscreen on my son and my friend was there as well we both had the same brand of sunscreen and I had run out of mine and mine said mineral sunscreen on it and hers didn't even though they're the same brand and she said oh you should buy this one it's a lot cheaper and you get more in it and at first I was like is it just because mine says baby on it that it's costing more money is it just marketing or is there a reason why this mineral sunscreen costs more and then I started to like really look into sunscreen and realized that there's only two different types of sunscreens there's a mineral sunscreen and there's a chemical sunscreen and they both work in different ways to stop your skin from getting burnt but then after looking into it I realized that I wanted to be using a mineral sunscreen on my kids because the chemical sunscreen had chemical active ingredients in there and they absorb into the skin and they actually absorb the uv rays as well and then a chemical reaction happens under the skin and it's released as heat so that's how like a sunscreen works but a mineral sunscreen reflects UV rays and it's normally like a lot more gentle on the skin and it doesn't absorb into the deep layers of skin.
3:52So then when I went to find a mineral sunscreen, I couldn't find one that wasn't like thick or white or chalky, like that zinc like sunscreen that like wouldn't rub in. And I was like, surely there is another solution to this. And obviously like lots of businesses, it started with the problem. And yeah, so then when I was looking at ones that were okay sunscreens that would rub in a little bit better than the other ones there had no brand they were just like white bottle in a natural health food store there was nothing cool about it no one was really like branding this now sunscreen had really kind of was just starting to get cool there was other brands coming out but they were all focused to us like they were all girls in bikinis that were like my age and as a mom like I don't want to go on somebody's social media and like find a sunscreen it like doesn't say it is for children so I was like there's has to be something here and I was literally sitting on the beach and I came up with the name son and daughter and I instantly was like oh my god I need to trademark this and I trademarked it straight away and I'm a hairdresser so I would be lying if I just said that I was never really looking to do something I always like um like I always knew that I wanted to like do something else like being a hairdresser I never had my own shop but and I didn't want my own shop so I always wanted to do something where how can I make money where I'm not the person cutting hair like I taught a lot of barbering and had a lot of clients and I had um quite a high-end clientele as well so my price point was I was earning like good money but I thought I always have to be that person cutting the hair to make money so how can I make money and not be the person physically working so I was always thinking like oh I wanted to do a kids brand and clothing and stuff like that but clothing was it's a little bit harder because you obviously constantly have to be doing like new um seasons and yeah so when I like thought of this idea I thought this is this is perfect like this is a product like not many people are doing it there's not many other kids sunscreens on the market and like how can we make this very cool but also supernatural and good for our children's skin and now there's a lot of things on social media about how bad sunscreen is for you but back then it wasn't really a thing yet so I kind of got in there at the right time and then yeah that's what started the whole that whole idea yeah there you go so you only launched two months ago the brand like the branding is on point you've done a fantastic job with the branding you did all that yourself right so a lot of it so basically when the idea came around and then like I love Canva so like I went on Canva and I played with every single font in Canva I got like a bottle off the internet just like a plain tube bottle and I was like putting different fonts on it writing son and daughter and I just randomly one day flipped the uh the logo and turned it bright red and I was like I love this and then I like changed my whole mood board and it was all like pops of color and I was like okay this is the direction I want to go in like this is fun like no one's really doing color yet everyone's doing the beige and boring Byron Bay vibes like and I was like I want to be like different and then that's how like the red color kind of came around and then I just like played on that and literally just every day was like playing with like changing the box to red or having the box cream with the red writing and then playing around with like all of the different like ideas and how I could do it and then once I had had everything like I made a brand deck and I had all of that and then I was ready to finalize it and I went to a branding agency to finalize because I do it all on Canva like I literally just copy and paste I don't know how to like properly like put where each text is going to go exactly so then they like finalized everything and they moved the and sign across because I didn't have that so they did that and that's what like kind of like made it spark and then yeah so I did a lot of it and gave them that they said oh we've never really worked with a client that's given us the brand deck before like I had the mission I had the tone of voice I had the values like I had everything ready and I had the colors I'm like you just finalize it and make it a bit better so yeah it was yeah you've done an amazing job with the brand and that's one thing that stood out to us right like you won you know you won the grant the founder plus grant fair and square you were like voted by far by the community and that's what stood out to me like I was like wow Tory's brand is amazing like oh like we've got so many other incredible companies but like yours I was like wow there's something really really special here so um tell me how did you find founder how'd you find founder plus like how'd you find us yeah so when I started the process I came home from Manly and I was like phoning like manufacturing companies around Australia and I soon found out that sunscreen is probably the hardest product to do like the minimum orders are massive and it's really expensive and at first I thought I was like okay I I need somebody that knows what they're doing to help me like that's what my initial thing was I've got the idea but I just need somebody that's maybe really good at marketing or knows how to run an e-commerce brand or has done it before and meanwhile I was getting your ads obviously they work read my mind and I just started like looking into it a little bit more I seen Greta's course first and I went to purchase that and then I realized that you can actually become a founder plus member and you can get all the courses so I got that and I just um I think I was pregnant or yeah I was pregnant with my second son at the time and I started the start and scale program and then after doing that I realized that I actually didn't need anyone that knew what they're doing because I pretty much had learned everything and I then that gave me the confidence to be like actually I think I know what I'm doing and then I like downloaded like Alibaba and then like learned how to talk to manufacturing companies through like what you guys teach and at first before I'd done the video on how to talk to manufacturing companies I was just messaging like hey I need to make a hat or like I wasn't really like getting anywhere and then realizing like okay you have to like actually talk to them like professionally and make them realize that you're going to be like a long-term customer and then like everything kind of changed after after that yeah so so tell me when did you when did you go okay I'm going all in on this how long did it take to find your manufacturer and kind of work So you're working on the brand, working on the idea.
10:29How long did it take to find your manufacturer and go, yep, this is me? So with the sunscreen, it probably took like a few months of looking at different manufacturing companies in Australia. And then once I found them, they asked me if they wanted them to find the manufacturer for the tubes in the boxes. And at first I said yes, but they were going to cost, like, it was so expensive because obviously they put their margins on it. so then I was like no I'm going to try and look myself so I found three different manufacturing companies of Alibaba for the tubes and I got samples made of all of them to see who I preferred and they were so different each sample was so different and I basically just picked the best one and I didn't know this at the time but my manufacturing company that make the sunscreen they use the one that I picked it was just like yeah it was just like complete coincidence that I was like, these are who make my tubes.
11:27And they were like, no way, that's actually one of our manufacturing companies. So like I knew at that point, I'm like, okay, so they're obviously pretty good. They gave me the best sample. And that's how I managed to get the manufacturing company for the tubes. And then I've got hats and brushes and stuff as well. And I just, yeah, again, just like searched on Alibaba and got samples made from a few different people and picked who I thought was the best. Yeah, there you go. So it's really clever. I love what you've done with these, you know, complementary products to the sunscreen with the hat and then the brushes to apply and you've made it really fun the marketing around i want to talk about that more but talk me through kind of moq because like some people watching this video be like oh wow you know brand's growing so fast zero to six figures in 12 months but like what was the size of the moq right like how many like Like, how do you work through that?
12:20So with the sunscreen, it was 5 ,000 units. And which is actually like not that much compared to other sunscreen companies. I was quite limited in who I could use because most of them were like 100 ,000 units. And like, I didn't know at the time how much each unit was going to cost. But I was like, even if it costs a dollar, that's 100 grand that I don't have. So, yeah, like it's very, very high MOQs being a sunscreen. So it's a big investment, which is probably why there wasn't many competitors. Yeah. And talk me through, you said it was one of the hardest things to do. Why? Because in Australia, a sunscreen is actually a medicine.
13:00So it has to be listed by the TGA to call it a sunscreen. So you legally cannot sell a sunscreen here and call it a sunscreen. You can call it like a sun bam or something else, but you can't call it a sunscreen unless it has been tested. and approved by the TGA and their regulations are like the strictest in the world and because it is a sunscreen every other country has got their own regulations so I've just now got it approved to sell in the UK but that was a whole other process and if we want to sell it in America we have to get it FDA approved so like each country is different so you can't sell it in the country unless they've been approved by that country because it's a medicine wow so that's even more impressive so basically all your sales are coming from all australia wow yeah okay i've had a couple from new zealand because we can sell it in new zealand yeah um but like a few in new zealand but majority is is all australia yeah there you go and how long did that once you found your obviously your manufacturers for the the bottles but and then also the hats and the brushes and then you've also got the sunscreen the formulation how long did that whole process take plus the approvals oh um probably well from when I was like okay we're actually doing this like this is the branding was finished like I'd had samples of like the tubes and the sunscreen was it was probably February and then we launched in or maybe it was a bit later it was probably like yeah me and then we launched in december so so about six six seven months yeah from like when we hit like go like yeah yeah yeah but then i was planning on launching in october but that didn't happen because obviously just time frames like i had problems with they sent me my tubes and then i was like yep they're perfect so then i got the sample of the product into the tube and they sent see-through the tubes look see-through and I was like oh my god the tubes are see-through so then I had to like go back to the manufacturing company and say hold the tubes are see-through I need you to put another layer in the tube so that it's not see-through so then they put another layer in the tube but they told me it was white but they actually put gray so then when the tubes came they were green so I had green tubes and I was going to the UK to visit my family like a week later and I had to like make a call what to do it was so stressful um I was like do I have green tubes do I have see-through tubes and then I realized that the original tube wasn't actually see-through the reason that I thought it I thought it was see-through was the manufacturing company had only put a little bit of product in there yeah and like nothing had no air had got into it yet and lots of tubes actually are a little bit see-through if you like put them up to the light and you haven't squeezed them yet but I didn't know that until I went into Mecca and I was looking at every single tube I was bringing them out the box and like putting it up to light and I'm like oh actually a lot of tubes are a little bit see-through it's fine but yeah so that was like a bit of a drama so that kind of pushed things back because I was like put everything on hold I need you to make me new samples and then when they were green it was a nightmare so um yeah so then that pushed us back a little bit and then obviously freight coming in for christmas time so the tubes weren't coming from china but everyone delivers wants to get stuff in the country to sell for christmas so then they were stuck on a boat for like a week at the port so that was stressful and then um finally they were like okay we've we've got them off the container we've got them out the container they're on the way to manufacturing company and i had to phone them being like please can you fit me in and they said we can fit you in in like a week and a half so then that was fine and then i had to get them to Melbourne then I literally they said we can get them to you but TGA have to approve it again in your final packaging that batch and I was like okay how long does that take they said it can take one to two weeks so they said we will send you it but it's under quarantine you cannot open the sunscreen so it was sitting ready to be sold wasn't allowed to open it they emailed me on the Friday before Christmas saying your approval from the TGA has been accepted you can now sell the sunscreen and I had to make a call where I was like okay do I launch on Monday which is like in a couple days just before Christmas and then I was like actually wait boxing day would be a good day because mums aren't out shopping like lots of people are stressed before Christmas but I thought boxing day is great because kids have all got their toys they're playing parents are relaxed They're on their phones.
17:46And obviously like Boxing Day sales, a lot of people were shopping on their phones. So then I made the call to launch on the Boxing Day, which was, I don't know, four or five days after I got the approval to sell it. Are you hesitating to take the next step in your e-commerce journey? Founder Plus has you covered. With proven frameworks tailored to your business needs for fast results, a supportive community of over 30 ,000 like-minded entrepreneurs and weekly live mentorship sessions, Founder Plus is your key to success. Try Founder Plus today for just$1 for seven days and start building your dream business with confidence.
18:19You can visit founder.com forward slash start dollar trial or click the link in the description to claim your trial. Yeah, wow, there you go. So talk me through that first sale. Who was it? Was it a family member, a boxing dad? Actually it wasn't. Do you know that? So the day before on Christmas Day, I made a video. I said, I hadn't told anyone until Christmas Day. I was like, I'm going live tomorrow. I'm like, set your alarms, 10 a.m. we are going live tomorrow boxing day and um because I'd built up a little bit of a following on my social media so I started posting in June or July pictures uh reels and I'd built up I think we had like 2 000 followers like as we launched and I would make lots of reels because I think people get this wrong where if you post photographs they don't go to anyone except from your followers but if you post reels they get spread to other people that aren't following you and then that will gain you followers so I was making a lot of reels and then boosting them so that it would be spread to more people and it would be like this is this new sunscreen this is how it rubs in like we're launching soon so yeah we built up this following and it built up hype I guess around the brand so when it came to launching on Boxing Day I said that the first 10 people I wanted to like get people to order so I was like if you're one of the first 10 people to order I will give you a free gift and I said it could be a brush it could be a cap a bucket hat it could be a full other bottle of sunscreen you could get two for the price of one so it kind of like put the pressure on people to order fast and we went live at 10 a.m and honestly the first order was 10 a.m I actually do not know how somebody navigated through a new website that they'd never been on before and ordered they must have just gone like click click click click click buy sunscreen and and then it was like I was planning on going live on Instagram to be like talk through the first 10 orders because I thought it was going to be a bit slower but it was like cha-ching cha-ching cha-ching like I got like 10 orders like super fast so that was exciting and then obviously I made a little video when I was packing those 10 orders to prove to people that okay this is Dani from WA she ordered the sunscreen i'm going to put a hat on in her um in her order because she was like our fifth customer and like out of those 10 two people i knew so i actually didn't know the rest of them and our first day we made four thousand dollars of sales wow yeah that's awesome yeah so it was pretty impressive obviously like i was like oh my god like i was happy with one like i was like if i sell one i'll be happy so yeah to do four thousand was was pretty good that's awesome yeah look i remember my first day launching healthish time marked water bottle brand we did like it was like 1500 or 2000 and we were stoked like it was awesome i remember us having a couple of wines celebrating it's such an awesome feeling and experience that you've put out this brand that you have no skills or experience or not even really you don't feel qualified to create this thing and people are buying it yeah no I know it was it was amazing like obviously that didn't continue doing 4 ,000 every day which was expected like your launch is always going to be like your best day at first because like yeah I obviously created hype around it and I gave people that incentive to buy fast because I was going to give them a gift and of course there was lots of like family and friends in the rest of the orders um but it never really like dropped below um I don't think we've ever done like we've never done no orders I don't think we've ever done even less than like seven or eight orders even in the first like few weeks so it's never we never never had a day of not like selling any and I also when I was before I launched we run a few ads to um get people to sign up so we had like 250 people on our email list so we like we'd run I ran like videos of like me putting sunscreen on the kids saying like this is this new sun this is why mums around Australia are switching to mineral sunscreen and it kind of like hooked people in and then said like we're launching soon sign up now to find out when so like we yeah we had built up like I think it was like 200 emails and so then the day before I launched I emailed everyone to say that we were going live tomorrow and then the day of in the morning I sent another email to say like we are live and then everyone got a 10 % off code that had signed up as well.
22:56Okay, awesome. So can you talk to us around the budget? Because I know a lot of people watching this kind of thinking, you know, wow, all right. Well, first of all, you got to be part of the Found Plus community because we do these grants. We're going to start doing it once every six months. But besides the grant, like what was your kind of initial budget to launch this brand? My initial budget when I wrote it all out was like$60 ,000. wow that's a lot and it was more than that wow so it was probably all up about almost a hundred thousand dollars yeah wow okay yeah so it's a big investment like a huge investment yes but as i said it's because it's sunscreen so if it wasn't sunscreen then it would have been a lot cheaper and um yeah it is it is a big investment but we also i also like put a lot of money into our photo shoot and campaign um which is what's made the brand I guess what it is because um I think people would think I was crazy because I a lot of people out there say that you don't need to put lots of money into like uh photo shoots and you can do it all on your iPhone now which you can but I wanted to stand out and I wanted to make this brand look very cool um so by doing that I had to invest in like a good photographer get models and I wanted to have that feeling of like okay this needs to look cool so how can I make it look cool exactly what I was saying it's just a bottle so I like styled all the the models myself got like lots of cool outfits styled them all created this huge shoot and if you look at it now that I say you'll notice it you actually can't tell it's for sunscreen I spent all this money on this shoot I wanted it to be like this though I said to the photographer I don't want you to capture the product I want you to capture children having fun and the feeling of summer like so we're like selling this feeling the fun kids being in nature kids being outside which is a lot of what big brands do like Nike and stuff they don't like post their product all the time I was like we're selling the summer feeling and she captured that amazing of just like the kids having fun um outside and enjoying nature and that's what our whole brand is about it's just yeah kids enjoying the outdoors basically um so yeah i feel like it was a big investment to do a campaign like that but i think it definitely paid off because it automatically put our brands above other brands who are say um not got as good quality content yeah look you've done a fantastic job with the brand and look it's interesting like when i started the healthish brand that started with about a twenty thousand dollar investment yeah it was about ten thousand dollars on stock eight to ten thousand dollars on stock and then the rest we just doubled down like you know it was like we bought the healthish.com domain that was like three grand like we didn't have to do that like i just wanted to double down on brand and at the time it made sense right so i think sometimes when you lean into brand a little more yes it's going to be expensive but it pays its weight in gold yeah like I never forget as well when I first started founder um you know I was designing the magazine covers and I was like looking at this one designer I was looking at this other designer who's much more expensive and I said to him you're too expensive and he said to me Nathan if you place a bigger emphasis on design in the early days of your brand it will pay its weight in gold in the long term yeah and i did that and he was right and that was something that i'll never forget like whatever brand that i launch in the future i will always just double down on brand because it is so powerful because it gets you that cut through and that's what you're getting right now yeah right so okay so talk me through i guess you launched how are you growing this thing because it's growing pretty fast yeah I think a couple things like we are doing meta ads yeah um I've just started to do TikTok um yeah I wasn't that familiar with TikTok I didn't have it before so um I'm just starting to go on the platform more getting used to that and I'm going to work on growing our TikTok now but yeah just through Instagram mostly I feel like a lot of mums my age are on Instagram as well and obviously people are on TikTok too but I am the market which makes it easier so like I know that I'm the market so like what do I want to see and I think just educating people as well around sunscreen and yes obviously the meta ads they help I was saying to Leah before like just like for instance like one day like our sales were not at our target like we have a target every day that I give myself a target every day and I was like okay how can I get this target up it was like one o 'clock in the afternoon I was like I want to try and like get people to purchase now to get our target up so I decided to jump on Instagram we got wet bags which are a wet bag is like where you put after swimming you put the wet clothes in and it keeps it um dry like away from everything else keeps the wet stuff in there it's the waterproof bags and I was like all right if anyone orders in the next 15 minutes I'll give you a free wet bag and it was like instant like I made a reel put it on the reel posted it and then put it on my story I was like and I said the time I always forget that like there's different time zones so I was like okay 4 p.m.
28:39in Melbourne I think it was like 4 p.m. in Melbourne actually and I was like at 4 p.m. so I put the video out at like 12 and I said at 4 p.m. today for 15 minutes only I will give every order a wet bag if you if you order between four and 4 15 Melbourne time and I wrote the times of like the other cities like whatever time it would be in their city and like within like five minutes it was like orders they were like I think we give away like we ended up giving away like seven or eight bags in like those 15 minutes and then we hit our target for the day more because like they didn't just buy they just didn't just buy one sunscreen maybe they bought two sunscreens or two sunscreens and a hat and then like I gave them a wet bag so it like kind of just forced people to to purchase straight away um so doing little things like that like one day I went on live on Instagram and same thing I was like hey I'm live if you guys order while I'm live I'll give you a free gift in your purchase I'll show you what it is um so yeah doing things like that really helped to just like get people to if they're on the fence it like kind of forces them or pushes them, not forces them, it pushes them to make that purchase because everyone loves something free.
29:49Yeah. So let's talk about that gift with purchase. Yeah. Because obviously it would have cost you more money to order the hats, the bags, the brushes you launched with not just that one hero product. You've got complimentary products, which obviously increases your average order value, which I think is very clever because, you know, when you're using Facebook ads, you want to get that aov up and you want it you want to get that return but um talk me through that like where'd you come up with that idea so obviously i learned that from doing the course like i realized that you have to have like cross sale and upsell products and i was like okay so the cross sale for a sunscreen would be an applicator and how can i make an applicator fun and there was a big like video on tiktok that everyone kept doing using their like mom's like foundation brushes kids were like putting makeup on and I was like as a boy mom like I don't want my son to use like a makeup brush like putting makeup on so I was like I want to make it a paintbrush so like they were like custom made I had to like find a manufacturing company that specialized in makeup brushes but then would get like a paintbrush handle and like combine them and make it like that's not like a off the shelf like yeah so um it took a while to find somebody that would actually make that for me um and makeup brushes aren't that expensive to make um and so I knew that that was going to be like the cross sale to the sunscreen and then our whole mission as a brand is to protect children's skin from the sun so I was like okay well we need hats and we need sunglasses so I was always playing around with like different caps and different bucket hats and I just found a couple manufacturing companies got some sample made early on like when my branding was cream and brown I actually had like brown and cream hats made like right from back in 2023 and my son wore them like over and over again so we tested them for like a year so I knew the quality was good and then when I flipped it to red and then like I just made like new red hats and cream hats and then got them made and everyone loved them like and then I could use them in bundles to help get my average order value so like the sunscreen's 39.95 and our average order value is like 75 to 80 dollars so it's like yeah and that's just from either bundling the sunscreen together where people like can buy three and they save money or it's from them getting the bundle of the hats and the brushes and people love the brushes like if people message me saying my kids hate putting sunscreen on but you give them a paintbrush and they don't want to stop they use half the ball which is great for me because then they have to order more yeah that's awesome yeah so look one thing that people don't talk about enough when it comes to facebook ads is you need a decent average order value to make the unit economics work and you need to you need to be at least 60 plus like that's a strange even that's pushing it 60 australian so that's awesome that's really clever i love how you did that that's super smart we have to work towards wrapping up but i want to talk about something i think is really important it's a massive trend i'm seeing in the marketplace which is around founder-led content.
33:02And you're doing a fantastic job where people know you, people know Tori. People, when they think of Tori, they think of son and daughter. When people think of son and daughter, they think of Tori because you're always out there and you're showing behind the scenes. I've taken screenshots like showing my girlfriend, like how amazing this person we supported through the community. Look how many boxes she's packing. I'm like, how cool is this? We've been able to help her in some way, shape or form. Like you're doing a fantastic job. How did you work out that's what you need to do? How did you kind of build up that courage to put yourself out there?
33:41Because that is tough. Even just working on the platforms like this is your first business. You've never done anything like this before. It's impressive. Yeah. I think it's just practice. And it's also like not caring like what other people think is like the main thing is like if you care too much about what other people think and like half the videos that I do, like I don't put makeup on I just like I'm in the house the kids are making a mess my house is a mess but like it's just like in that moment I'm like I need to do a video about this and not overthinking it and just like putting it out there and just posting it and like not worrying about it being perfect not worrying about like and that's the the ones that do the best really like all of our ads constantly making new content but all of the ads that actually convert there's like a few of them that just convert the best and like none of them are my beautiful photography so like all those beautiful photography photos none of them convert when it's ads they are great for my website and my brand and I love them for my like aesthetically pleasing Instagram but when it comes to like making a sale through the ad they don't convert all the ones that convert is me talking because I think people can relate especially because I say I'm a mum of two so mums automatically will take other mums advice rather than buy from a big company they don't know so um yeah just me talking to the camera about this is what the sunscreen is this is why you need to buy it for your child and this is what we're doing they're the ones that convert so like yeah just the more videos I do talking to the camera just it becomes easy once once you do a few and he just um I think you have to just feel like you're talking to your friends like you're on FaceTime and that's what people love because they they watch you and they feel like they know you um so then they trust you and then when it comes to them wanting to buy sunscreen they will end up buying from you because they feel like they personally know you and yeah yeah and this is the power of founder-led content especially building an e-commerce brand and this they can compete with big brands right because only one you yeah so okay we have to work towards wrapping up but i just wanted to kind of go through what is next like your brand is growing super fast you're on track you know you're doing tens of thousands of dollars every month in sales it's growing super fast what is next and like you're doing this as well while you're still working your job right yeah so i and and you're a busy mom too like it's kind of insane i know it's only you it's just me yeah yeah um so next we are launching a body wash so essentially I want like a step process so it's like step one you protect your children's skin step two you come home you wash it off and step three you moisturize right so like they're like our like products so we are launching a body wash essentially like sunscreen removal if that makes sense so you take the sunscreen off that's why it kind of like goes as a partner product it's been so much harder than what I thought it oh it's been a nightmare I've gone through like four different manufacturing companies because I am so passionate about the ingredients that go into products and so many manufacturing companies will want to add lots of different ingredients lots of different preservatives lots of different like ingredients that are say not as natural or that have alcohol in them and that is not what our brand is about and I've finally managed to find a smaller manufacturing company who get me and have made the perfect uh I was gonna say recipe but um formula the perfect formula for us and so I'm so happy about that but it has taken a long time and I think it's just persevering like with everything like I don't like taking no as an answer like I'll just keep going and I'll like okay well then I'll move on to a different manufacturing company because I got told no you have to have these ingredients in it like you have to have this and I was like no I don't want that so I'll just move to somebody else so it's been hard like it definitely has been harder but I want to stick to my guns of the brand and it's basically like ingredients is our most important thing if I don't want to put on my children's skin why would somebody else want to put on their children's skin so yeah I think that's what's going to set us apart from other brands especially because there's lots of body washes out there but um ours I feel will be one of the best especially like with the ingredients that we're using and then we have another sunscreen launching which is exciting I can't tell you much about it because it's very exciting um but we will be launching that uh hopefully by october november so just in time for summer here and um yeah there's a few more products that we want to come out and obviously bring out some more hats and different colors as well but essentially we want to be like a natural children's skincare brand so sun is definitely like our main focus but um vouching out to different other skincare products that children use on their skin and it's a really good thing to do because obviously with an e-commerce brand you want people to come back and buy and people are constantly using body wash people are constantly using sunscreen so like that's where we'll get that repeat purchase yep yep yep yep yep so i have to ask you the the question that a lot of people think is where do you find the time it's just you you're still working your day job as a hairdresser as well one where do you find the time and surely you have to work towards going all in on this soon right yeah well honestly I do so much on my phone so like I could like be sending emails at the park I'll be pushing like one child on the swing and like the other one's like playing in the sandpit and I'm sending an email which is good and bad because obviously like you want to be like present with your kids by the same time you're like want to be like working and like doing this so like a lot of the time I do things on my phone but I also just do it when the kids are sleeping like it's probably why I've got bags under my eyes like I they'll go to sleep at seven and I'm straight on my laptop like people ask me all the time oh do you watch this program on Netflix have you seen this movie I'm like no like I don't have time to sit down and watch tv like my partner will sit down and like watch a documentary and I'll be like straight like that to me that is just wasting my time so like I'll just be straight on the laptop and I'll be like straight like onto Alibaba like getting samples of new hats made or I come up with this idea and I like I'm quite fast like when I thought of the wet bags it was like all right design a wet bag wet into Canva pick the colors find a manufacturing company give me a sample like no so like yeah I just I think you just make it work and I work as a barber still on a Monday and tuesday afternoon and on a saturday um but like my eldest son's now in kinder two days a week so my mother and i've got good family around and my mother-in-law comes around and takes the youngest one off me for a few hours and i can just pump out some work and i'm packing orders normally in the evenings or the mornings and last night me and my partner were up till um midnight packing orders he was he was taping the boxes and i was and i was packing them because we did this is one bit of advice I'd give somebody actually we did a little um collaboration with um her name's boob to food she's got a big following mum following um and she posted for us yesterday and make sure that you have enough boxes in stock before you do something like this because I ran out of boxes last night like packing boxes because I was like I didn't actually know that she was going to post like yesterday I thought it was going to be next Sunday but yeah so I was like packing and halfway through packing I was like oh my god we've run out of small boxes I had a bit medium size so it was fine but um yeah that's something I would recommend if you're going to do like a giveaway or something with an influencer or somebody that's got a lot of others make sure you've got your enough boxes that's a good problem to have though that's a great problem to have and I definitely also recommend that um there's a difference between people that influence people and or who are an influencer a lot of influencers who have got big following people watch them for entertainment they're not like people aren't always following them and they're going to buy everything that they recommend and sometimes as well like mum influencers for instance they were not always a mum so a lot of their following could be boys there were hot girls like lots of guys follow them that's no good to me like I did a giveaway with this girl and she has a brand that's literally about what to feed your baby after milk so her followers are all mumps so that's why it worked really well for us because her following is exactly my audience yeah that's clever yeah awesome well look we have to wrap there this has been an incredible interview we're probably gonna have to get you to come back because you're only two months in this business is booming i assume that you'll be going full-time on this pretty soon right you're gonna have to right yeah hopefully i mean i have a very expensive mortgage um so my work pays for that if i'm honest and everything that we make from the brand it goes straight back in like we're making new sunscreen as i said we've got new sunscreen coming we've got body wash coming like all of those cost money we've got new hats to order so like eventually hopefully i can yeah cut down on cutting people's hair which some of my clients will not be too happy about um but yeah and then hopefully one day go all and hopefully i outgrow my my spare bedroom yeah there you go well look congratulations on all your success thus far it's really inspiring what you've been able to build and just watch your journey from afar these past few months as i've got to you know learn about you and and your brand and son and daughter and all the things you're doing i have no doubt that we'll have to get you back in the next six to twelve months to do a follow-up to see where you're at but congratulations on all your success thank you so much thanks for having me hey guys if you love this episode you've got to check out my interview with davy fogarty on how he finds trends in undercapitalized markets and turns them into multi-million dollar businesses i'm generally looking for trends globally we find trends that haven't been kind of capitalized in certain markets or in certain marketing channels yes and then we also obviously add our flair to it you need to differentiate your product
From the publisher
In this episode, Tori Gill shares how she transitioned from being a barber to launching a six-figure sunscreen brand in just three months. She dives into how she identified a gap in the market, built a brand that resonated with parents, and leveraged Instagram and organic marketing to drive rapid sales. Tori also reveals how she balanced starting the business while still working her day job and the lessons she’s learned about manufacturing, branding, and scaling a product-based business.
Listen to Nathan and Dan discuss:
- How Tori built a waitlist and used urgency to generate first-day sales
- The viral Instagram moment that helped Sun & Daughter take off
- The challenge of getting TGA approval for sunscreen and how she navigated regulations
- The role of upsells and complementary products like hats and brushes in boosting revenue
- The future of Sun & Daughter and plans for expansion beyond sunscreen
And much more early stage business advice…
Click here to start your business for $1. You’ll get all-access foundr+, where you’ll find more in-depth, proven strategies from founders like our guest today and support and advice from our global community of 30,000 founders.
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