864 Adeela Hussain Johnson: CEO of BÉIS

28:25But it was really, really important, like who we were speaking to in terms of product assortment, it was very tight. And I again, I would, I would say anybody kind of starting a new brand like that's so important, because you only have but so many dollars to spend. And you have to invest in areas of the business that drive awareness. And those are expensive, and get more expensive as you scale sometimes, especially at the beginning, right, we needed to have infrastructure in this business that helps support growth. And you have to buy inventory. And again, our product is not cheap to buy, right?

28:59So the inventory itself is expensive. So you can't spread yourself too thin in that way. So we were very intentional and very, very few people realize this, but we actually did not launch with rollers. And that was incredibly intentional because the roller market was more saturated than other markets. And we believed we could win with a product category that was like an overnight bag that looked chic, that looked amazing. It's called our Weekender. It is still our number one selling SKU. It solved a lot of functional needs. It looked really good. We believed it solved a lot of the desire to have something that was a shoulder bag and that was very different and we could market it differently than what a roller's needs were.

29:47And more importantly, in my opinion, and what was very core to the strategy, we launched with products that we could help build a collection. We were thinking in our head, We don't want somebody to just come in and buy one item. We want somebody to come in and buy one item and then build out a collection. And once you buy a roller, you're not probably buying another roller anytime soon, right? That's not a purchase that people make every three weeks, four weeks, three months. But if you buy a bag and then there's a cosmetic case that matches it and there's a luggage tag that matches it, then there's a passport holder.

30:18Maybe you'll buy deep into that color profile. So we really nailed the idea, I think, early that color matters and people will shop and build assortment by color. And that is still one of the things we do exceptionally well is color. Right. Once you come in on maple, you are a maple girly and you buy everything in maple. So it was a really tight assortment. It was very intentional and it was a very intentional consumer that we were speaking to.

30:43Kara Goldin:This episode of The Cara Golden Show is sponsored by Wayfair. One thing I've learned over the years is that the right piece of furniture can completely change how a room feels. I recently realized my home office needed a refresh, so I ordered a beautiful gray weathered wood bookcase from Wayfair. I couldn't believe it was just under$300. It looks like something that should have cost twice that, and it pulled the entire room together. What really sold me was how easy the whole experience was. You can shop with Wayfair Verified, which is your shortcut to the good stuff. Their team of product specialists vets everything by hand using a 10-point inspection, testing things like quality of materials, functionality, and features, and even how long it takes to build.

31:32Kara Goldin:Plus, with over 20 million five-star reviews, you're not buying blind. You can see real customers, real homes, and real feedback before anything hits your cart. And Wayfair has everything for your home in one place. Seating, grills, appliances, storage, lighting, rugs, decor. So you're not bouncing between stores. If putting it together sounds like a headache, they can handle delivery, installation, and assembly. You just pick what you want and they deal with the rest. If a friend told me they were putting off updating their home because of the cost or because they didn't know where to start, I'd tell them to start with Wayfair.

32:14Kara Goldin:I ordered from Wayfair and honestly, you should too. Ready to upgrade your home for way less? Head to wayfair.com right now to shop all things home and get your space ready for less. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to by Rippling. Let's face it, most AI can surface information, but business leaders don't just need answers. They need action. That's what makes Rippling AI different. Say you want to focus on talent retention. Just ask Rippling AI, who are my top performers this year? And instantly get a workforce report flagging potential at-risk employees with supported data like comp ratios, recent performance reviews, and engagement metrics.

33:07Kara Goldin:Then Rippling AI can turn those insights into real action, like recommending a retention strategy that includes a 5 % spot bonus for top performers in your next payroll run. Just tap confirm to add it to next month's payroll run. So don't settle for AI that's all talk. Head to rippling.ai slash Kara Golden and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your business and take complex actions across your entire organization. That's r-i-p-p-l-i-n-g dot a-i slash Kara Golden. Sign up for exclusive access today. Today's episode is brought to you by Warby Parker. Finding the right glasses used to feel way more complicated than it needed to be.

33:56Kara Goldin:Expensive, confusing, and somehow still hard to know which frames would actually work for you. And honestly, eye exams could feel like an even bigger project. You have to find a doctor, book the appointment, figure out insurance, and then often go somewhere else to actually get your glasses. That's what I love about Warby Parker. They've made the whole experience feel simple, modern, and actually enjoyable. You can go into many Warby Parker stores for an eye exam, update your prescription, and then shop for glasses, sunglasses, or contacts all in one place. No running around to multiple appointments or trying to piece everything together.

34:39Kara Goldin:I'm wearing mine right now. These are the pair I picked and I love how lightweight they feel, how well made they are, and how modern the style is. Warby Parker prescription glasses start at just$95, and that includes anti-reflective, scratch-resistant, and UV-protective coatings. They're also covered by many major eye insurance plans, and even if you're out of network, Warby Parker can help handle the paperwork. They have over 300 retail stores across the country, so there's a good chance there's one near you. Right now, buy one pair of glasses and get 20 % off and any additional pairs at warbyparker.com slash Kara Golden.

35:25Kara Goldin:That's 20 % off any additional pairs when you purchase one pair at warbyparker.com slash Kara Golden. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast.

36:13Kara Goldin:That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical. Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed.

36:59Kara Goldin:Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. What gets harder as a company, from your experience, reaches the stage that you're at? I mean, you have grown into hundreds of millions of dollars. Like, what have you seen that is probably one of the hardest things that maybe you didn't see when you were working for other companies?

37:42Kara Goldin:Even if you were managing a unit, you were sort of hidden from that. But now you're not. You're running that company. And what is kind of the hardest at this stage? Yeah, I mean, I think it's honestly like incremental growth, right? And I think you can only grow a business so many ways. You're either speaking to additional consumers, whether it's within your consumer demo or you expand outside of a consumer demo. You launch into new categories so that you are now meeting the needs of different types of consumers or you are available in different channels. Like those are the three ways that you kind of grow an audience.

38:18Right. And I think the bigger you get, it is harder to steer the ship. And it's less easy to be as nimble as you were when you were a$50 million business, both from a team standpoint, because there's that many more people you have to bring along from a like an expense standpoint, because everything you do just requires more money to do it because of the scale. But it's also just harder because you, especially early in a business and with kind of like that explosive growth, your infrastructure is chasing growth because you got there really, really fast. So now everything is kind of having to be set up to help support that level of growth.

38:59And then you've kind of really, really honed in into your audience and you really have a playbook that works. And then something changes, right? And when you hit certain growth metrics, and it's not just the size of your business, it's the market dynamics that happen around you. If you are doing really, really well and you're doing something really well, you're not going to be the only person doing it for very long. And so, right, that naturally there is a competitive landscape that will become much more aggressive as you grow. Right. And if you're doing it well, that is going to happen. And to continue to stay relevant, to continue to drive newness, continue to drive innovation, to reach new audiences, that just becomes harder.

39:42And it's much more expensive to do. And I think, you know, what's a 5 % growth at our dollar number now is a meaningful number. Missing something by 1 % is a meaningful number. And so the stakes are so much higher. And I think there is a risk profile that changes when you're younger in a business and your revenue isn't so huge that if you make a mistake, it's like, yeah, it's okay, let's learn, let's move on. And the price of that mistake is much bigger later. And so risk tolerance in general of an organization, especially investor-backed organizations, are just harder to do because the dollar associated with kind of missing is harder, right?

40:23And it's harder to absorb and harder to mitigate. So I think it's kind of like just it just gets tougher to reach those audiences in those ways. And the risk tolerance to do it goes down. I wish that dynamic wasn't true because I think part of part of what makes any brand really successful is a team and a business's ability to take risk. But it's just natural. It's a natural progression. It doesn't mean you don't do it. It's just has to be much more intentional and likely slower than how you did it before.

40:53Kara Goldin:This episode of the Cara Golden Show is sponsored by Wayfair. One thing I've learned over the years is that the right piece of furniture can completely change how a room feels. I recently realized my home office needed a refresh, so I ordered a beautiful gray weathered wood bookcase from Wayfair. I couldn't believe it was just under$300. It looks like something that should have cost twice that, and it pulled the entire room together. What really sold me was how it easy the whole experience was. You can shop with Wayfair Verified, which is your shortcut to the good stuff. Their team of product specialists vets everything by hand using a 10-point inspection, testing things like quality of materials, functionality, and features, and even how long it takes to build.

41:42Kara Goldin:Plus, with over 20 million five-star reviews, you're not buying blind. You can see real customers, real homes, and real feedback before anything hits your cart. And Wayfair has everything for your home in one place. Seating, grills, appliances, storage, lighting, rugs, decor. So you're not bouncing between stores. If putting it together sounds like a headache, they can handle delivery, installation, and assembly. You just pick what you want and they deal with the rest. If a friend told me they were putting off updating their home because of the cost or because they didn't know where to start, I'd tell them to start with Wayfair.

42:23Kara Goldin:I ordered from Wayfair and honestly, you should too. Ready to upgrade your home for way less? Head to wayfair.com right now to shop all things home and get your space ready for less. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Rippling. Let's face it, most AI can surface information but business leaders don't just need answers, they need action. That's what makes Rippling AI different. Say you wanna focus on talent retention. Just ask Rippling AI, who are my top performers this year? And instantly get a workforce report flagging potential at-risk employees with supported data like comp ratios, recent performance reviews, and engagement metrics.

43:16Kara Goldin:Then Rippling AI can turn those insights into real action, like recommending a retention strategy that includes a 5 % spot bonus for top performers in your next payroll run. Just tap confirm to add it to next month's payroll run. So don't settle for AI that's all talk. Head to rippling.ai slash Kara Golden and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your business and take complex actions across your entire organization. That's r-i-p-p-l-i-n-g dot a-i slash Kara Golden. Sign up for exclusive access today. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro.

44:02Kara Goldin:Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical. Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job.

44:55Kara Goldin:Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire.

45:35Kara Goldin:Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. Yeah, definitely. So what have you learned about building the brand? Like you were there in the early days getting the word out about base. And, you know, as you said, things change, right? As you scale and you have to find new growth for the brand. But when you think about what you've learned about the brand building and how do you acquire these new customers, what, maybe what are some new areas that you stepped into that you think are, you know, you never would have thought of that years ago?

46:17Yeah, I mean, we have always valued experiential marketing. You know, that is I hear it a lot now kind of as this new evolution. And I'm like, oh, like that's new. Like we've been and I would say, you know, sorry, almost like back, I think 21 was the first year we did a pop up. And we've always recognized that, especially in a D2C business, where we do not have our own brick and mortar stores and the retailers we use are part of like a bigger like a Nordstrom that's part of a bigger organization. You're never going to be able to tell your brand story in the same way. And so to me, experiential marketing is still very much at the center and critical for any brand, even more critical for a D to C brand where you don't necessarily have like built in ways to interact with a consumer like they can walk into your store.

47:10But what I think has meaningfully changed in the last like six months, 12 months is the need and desire to scale those efforts to be able to reach a much broader set of audiences. So where kind of more localized efforts worked really well, because, you know, if somebody is sitting in Miami, we have an event in L.A., it's cool for them to look at, like, the world of technology, AI, you know, all the things that are kind of happening around us. like people want to experience that no matter where they are. And this, the true definition of omni-channel, I think is now coming to play where even when I was back in Target, we used to talk about omni-channel as, okay, well, the experience of going in a store and buying online.

48:01Omni-channel to me is the way consumers experience your brand needs to be able to reach them no matter where they are. And I think that dynamic is actually very unique and has like changed dramatically in the way that we think about anything now when we do in marketing is it's really about scale. And that is a different beast. It's a very different beast, especially in experiential marketing, where the way you think about experiences like somebody's individual experience with you when they are interacting with your brand. But it is that is the base expectation now is changing and not base like our base baseline expectation is changing on how consumers want to interact with their brands, especially if they're not able to go to that experience that you had in Miami when we did Poppy last weekend, you know.

48:52And so I think that is that is different. And I think as a business, we have to evolve and everybody around us has to evolve to figure out, like, how do you scale these efforts to reach even a broader audience and bring people along in that journey?

49:07Kara Goldin:Is there seasonality in your category and what might surprise people? Yeah, I mean, the typical you would expect around holiday time period is a significant piece of our business, not just holiday like Black Friday, Cyber Monday holiday, but holiday travel. In fact, we see a significant regular retail business around that time just because the sheer volume of people who are buying gifts, who are buying stuff for their own travel. But then another peak is actually like we have a spring peak that happens. They call it resort season. So it's like right before your spring break. And then summer peak, right?

49:44So before summer travels, it's the fashion calendar is actually very much like it's concurrently built with the travel calendar. Those two calendars are very, very similar to one another. So the where you kind of see runway shows, like that's kind of the same peaks that we see in travel. And that works really well for our business because we are a trend-driven business as well in terms of us wanting to bring fashion to this category. And so we actually mimic that kind of fashion calendar and it's very aligned to the travel calendar. So outside of D2C, where can people find base? We're in quite a few retailers and I'm nervous I'm going to miss them.

50:23So hopefully I don't. But we have Nordstrom, Revolve, Blueingdale's. We're in Anthropologie. We're in the Hudson Group, which you'll find in airports. I'm definitely, we're in Indigo in Canada. I'm sure there's a couple of others that I'm missing, but those are our current, yeah. So there's a few, and that will be expanding over the course of the next couple of years. One of our big footprints is to expand our wholesale market. That's awesome. Are you just in the U.S. right now? It's a global business. We We ship just about everywhere, but we have kind of more localized efforts in the EU, UK, Canada, and here.

50:58Kara Goldin:When looking back, especially since you've been there since the beginning, what was the most pivotal decision the base made that you really saw the hockey stick start to go? It was the decisions we made around COVID. We had launched in 2018 by launching a travel forward brand in 2019. So we launched 2018 without rollers. 2019, we launched rollers in June of 2019 and in March of 2020. We all know kind of what happened. And one of the biggest focuses, and I mentioned it earlier, when we launched the brand was we were really looking at like, how do we help people build collections? Like that was always the mindset and always how we thought about the business.

51:40It was never about the insular purchase and it was never about like just travel. We always wanted to play in multiple categories that answered like the on the go need. that paid us back in spades when COVID hit because we did not have all of our eggs in one basket. We had several product categories that we had lost, the diversity of our portfolio. So before we knew about COVID, obviously that was our business strategy. What happened in COVID, and I think probably just the very, there were some very critical decisions that were made at that time that really impacted our ability to scale, which shockingly happened very significantly, even in that post-COVID, like immediate post-COVID time period, is one, figuring out that, OK, people are maybe not getting on a plane, but they are still moving.

52:33They've just changed the way they're doing it. So whether they need to be hands-free because they had gloves on and they need to sanitize, or they're going on a car trip somewhere because people are still needing to get out, right? and they're still needing to engage in the world, but it looks really different. And we very, very quickly figured out, here's what we think people are going to need. And we got some of those things right, right? So we had a work bag, for example. This is a perfect example. We had a work bag that was doing well, like it was a good skew, but all of us obviously moved to a work from home environment immediately.

53:09We were all in office full time before COVID and we all moved. And I had three young kids. They were like three under five at the time. And my eldest was going to be starting kindergarten. And so I found myself moving my workstation from room to room to room all day. So if they were in this room, I was moving to that room. And I was like, I kept putting everything into my work bag because I'm like, it was the only way that I could efficiently move through the house. And we were like talking as a group. We're like, I bet everybody, like so many people must be doing that, whether they're going outside to work or they're switching rooms.

53:44Like everybody's kind of figuring this out. And so like that, we started to focus a ton of marketing attention on that. That bag took off, right? And like just little nuggets of really, really understanding our consumer. We started marketing the Weekender bag, which we actually gift. We had a significant gifting effort to nurses. We transitioned one of our production lines to make masks. Like we were really invested in like supporting our world and our community and what we were going through. But our weekender bag turned out to be this amazing bag for nurses because nurses were putting clean bags on top.

54:20And then there's like that bottom section that's separated their dirty soil clothes there. And like that became a thing that we started to help support. And we were gifting bags to nurses. And then that took off. And so it was, you know, there was a little bit of like a serendipitous kind of opportunity met preparation moment for sure. The second thing I think we really did well and we figured out at that time and why it was so pivotal, brands in our industry got super freaked out, rightfully so, right? The world is literally grounded and we are in the world of helping people move around. And they pulled back.

55:00All ad spend came out of the market. Everything, everything pulled back. And that was the opportunity where myself and at the time our VP of digital were like, this is the time we spend, right? This is the time where nobody else is talking and we have an opportunity to break through in a way that's way more cost efficient than what it would be if everybody was speaking. And we doubled down. We actually spent more post-COVID than we did pre-COVID in helping to tell our brand story. And it was quiet, right? It was quiet. We had like a active and people were on their phones all day. And so we were able to really figure out strategically like this is not a time to pull out.

55:39And I think it's a caution to kind of business owners and founders that sometimes in these moments of panic, there is actually opportunity if you're able to kind of afford it and see through it. And we weren't a huge brand at the time, so it's not like we had indispensable amounts of money, but it's really being strategic of understanding your consumer and how they respond and like really figuring out where it makes sense to spend. Because it's not when the world kind of falls apart, it's not like pull back on everything and preserve. There's times to actually like double down.

56:12Kara Goldin:I couldn't agree more. So Adila, thank you so much. Such a smart and fascinating educational conversation. So really, really great what you've done to scale base into the incredible brand that it is today. The products are terrific. Everyone, even beyond the weekender bag, everyone needs to definitely try base and follow Adila as well. We'll have all the info in the show notes. But thank you again. And thanks, everyone, for listening. I will see you next time on The Kara Golden Show. Thanks for having me. Thanks again for listening to The Kara Golden Show. If you would, please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit.

56:59Kara Goldin:And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Golden. I would love to hear from you too, so feel free to DM me. And if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building, Hint. We are here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Thanks for listening and goodbye for now. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro.

58:06Kara Goldin:through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical. Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings.

58:51Kara Goldin:Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply.