How Jake Paul's personal care brand W is leveraging its influencer founder

0:04Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Modern Retail Podcast.

0:30the personal care section. Sure, we'll talk about that. But what I really want to get into is just what it means to lead a brand that is associated with a specific creator or influencer or just having a personality tied and how you go about that and the brand playbook that is associated with it. The company has raised some money recently, has been sort of on an expansion spree. It's in Walmart, which is pretty impressive to get out the gate. And also, I know Woody has a background working with other creator-led brands, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a few minutes. but I'll shut up and I'll introduce Woody.

1:01How are you doing? I'm great. No, I'm super excited to be chatting. We launched four months ago and we're selling in every Walmart in America and we're really, really excited about the business and there's a lot more to come from W. Yeah, I'm excited to get into all that, but let's start with you. So the product just launched four months ago. How long had you been working on it before it came to launch and what were you doing before? Yeah, so I've been working with Jake and our other co-founder, Jeff Wu, for about two years now. We started working on the business and ideating and trying to really understand what the category opportunity was in men's personal care.

1:40So we've been heads down working together with each other for about two years. So I'll obviously talk a lot more about W and all that. Then before that, I've always been a consumer. I started out my career doing consumer investment banking and private equity investing, but really loved the operating side. So I joined Casper super early, the D2C darling from the 20 teens and did a lot of really interesting roles there. I was on the finance team, did marketing, ran their e-commerce business for two years, and then got an amazing opportunity four years ago to start a brand with Kris Jenner in the cleaning space.

2:18And that was kind of my first foray into the crazy world of celebrity or personality founded brands. And then a few years ago, I started working with Jake and we launched the business four months ago. And I think the celebrity or creator founded brand is really, it's really the future of consumer in a lot of ways. It's hard for those businesses to succeed, but if you get the formula right, it's an amazing opportunity. Got it. Yeah. I feel like it's something that I hear a lot more people saying is that it's it's helpful if there is a personality or really driving personal force behind it, but then sometimes it doesn't work.

2:51And I want to talk about all that. But let's start with the product itself. It's personal care. You started most predominantly with deodorant, and it's been really men-focused. I think I read somewhere that it's anyone between 10 and 30. That's sort of the age range. And pretty much you're going after the Axe and Old Spice demographic. Would you agree with that? I guess more or less, I think when I think about this demographic, I don't really think they have a brand they're loyal to. There really isn't a brand that speaks to that younger generation, which is what we saw the opportunity around.

3:24I think Axe and Old Spice are great brands that have been around for a long time. But when we looked at the landscape today, those are incumbent brands and they target a very different demographic than the Gen Z, Gen A, Gen Y consumer today. So that's really where we are. We're focused on that younger consumer that really resonates with Jake because there just wasn't a brand that represented them. And yeah, when it comes to the product, we also saw just a really interesting and compelling opportunity to bring a better for you product to market at a very affordable price. And that's an important thing we wanted to do for the consumer because we thought it was the right thing to do from a personal and business perspective.

4:07You can give people better products that still work really well for a very affordable price by removing a lot of these kind of toxic product categories and ingredient categories that just don't need to be in the products for them to work. Was the idea, did Jake come to you guys and say, I want to do a better for you Gen Alpha, Gen Z men's care product? Or how did that come about? And when did the ingredients come into play? Yeah, so Jake has been wanting to do something in this category for a long time. There's a story of him pitching an investor this idea like seven years ago. I want to disrupt this category because he walked into a CVS and saw that the brands in that aisle hadn't changed since when he was in middle school.

4:48which is for the most part true like there really have not been a lot of new entrants so we were kicking the tires on a few categories to launch a brand into but this is the one he was most passionate about and really got excited about and from an ingredients perspective from a formulation perspective that was one of the first things we did when we started working together you know when i first started working with them as a consultant just to kind of kick the tires on the idea and the longest lead time that you have in a business like this is product So that's really where we focused our energies first and foremost, starting to find the right manufacturing partners, starting to align on the formulas that we liked, didn't like.

5:27So that was the first step that we took when we started working together. Got it. And one thing I wanted to ask at the offset, because I think it's smart, but also difficult, is that you launched going into every Walmart. Like, was that by design? Was that an opportunity that presented itself and you wanted to do it? And I mean, I imagine I know the answer, but was it helpful to have a name like Jake associated with it to be able to get the attention of a company like Walmart? For sure. I mean, I think it's a chicken or the egg equation. Having Jake is what allowed us to get such large distribution in Walmart because there's a few things.

6:05They really saw the vision of the brand. You know, W is a better for you men's personal care brand that stands for winning and inspiring confidence in young men. And that's really a pretty interesting gap when it comes to the psychographic behind these brands that sit in the men's personal care space. No one was filling that void. And then they also saw they needed a brand that could drive the younger consumer to stores. So that's really where we came in. And the way we were able to do that so successfully is because of Jake. And so I had launched a brand in Walmart before we had relationships there.

6:39You know, we knew the power of Walmart from a distribution standpoint. I think what really got us confident in taking such a big bet from day one, I got Walmart confident is because we had one of the most valuable marketing assets in the world and Jake Paul and his built in audience. because I think the hard thing, especially in this category, if you were to launch a product or a brand in this category, D2C, your price point would need to be 2 or 3x what ours is so that you can have the economics work in a direct-to-consumer model. But because we were going mass and we wanted it to be a good value to the consumer, we really had to focus on retail as our first step into sales distribution.

7:21Yeah, that was actually, I mean, you kind of answered it, but I was going to say if hypothetically it didn't work out with Walmart or anywhere else, would you have gone DTC? Because I feel like that's what a lot of brands do. And then we learned that it's quite difficult to actually make that work, especially for something like this segment. Yeah, I mean, if Walmart didn't want to be our partner from day one, we'd probably, I know it's a great question. I don't know what we would have done. We probably would have stayed the course and just found another partner, to be honest, because the only way this business is going to work is really retail first.

7:50We're going to launch some digital channels in Q1 or 25. but it's not going to be D2C because D2C, there's the embedded cost of having to drive traffic to your site, which just isn't something that makes sense with our price point, nor is it where the consumer shops for this category. So the goal for us is really to be where people shop and we want to be their brand of choice that really resonates with them from a product perspective. They love the product and they also love what the brand stands for. It's a brand they want to have as part of their routine. That's a big part of how people choose brands in this category.

8:26It has to be a brand that kind of resonates with you and the person you want to portray out in the world. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. You've mentioned this a little bit, but can we just go into, given that you went from one creator-led brand to another, is that now like a necessary for the companies you work at? Or what did you learn when working with a Kris Jenner-affiliated brand that you then said, these elements are what I know will be successful for this Jake Paul brand? Well, I think there's two very different ways to grow brands, right? I think a lot of the brands we know today as kind of overnight successes were often built grassroots over five to 15 years.

9:06And then all of a sudden they have a moment, right, where they have a lot of brand loyalty, people of the product and they kind of step out onto the grand stage. And I think if you're going to launch a brand with a creator, the expectations are high. The creator especially wants that brand to succeed pretty quickly. They want it to scale very quickly. And that dynamic used to exist in consumer during the heyday of DTC when Warby Parker and Harry's and Casper were scaling. You could acquire customers for a pretty reasonable clip and drive a lot of traffic to your website, that arbitrage has gone away.

9:43Now that new arbitrage in my mind is creator because creators have this massive embedded audience of people who want to associate with them. So I think if you're trying to launch a brand today and really have it hyperscale, I think there's probably multiple ways to do it, but I think creator is the one that's been identified as the most viable path to that. for my opinion, because they just, it has to be the right creator and has to be the right product and has to be the right category. There's so many different ingredients, but I do think if you're going to launch a brand and consumer and your goal is to hyperscale, I think creator is in my mind, the most viable path forward to try to achieve that.

10:23Yeah. And I don't know if you can share this, but in terms of marketing expenditure, I imagine you don't need to spend as much if you just have Jake saying that he's launching the product in one of his videos, right? For sure. I mean, that would cost you tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars, the level of exposure that he's been able to drive. So I do think there's certainly that arbitrage. And I also think one of the really unique things we have with Jake, which I haven't seen with many other creator brands, he is so invested in this brand. He is touting W all over the place, whether it's on the shorts he's wearing while he works out.

11:02It's his gym in Puerto Rico. It's covered in our logo. He has product with him all the time. He is always on, and there's so much value to that. He really genuinely believes in this brand and wants this brand to succeed. the brand is a big part of who he is. So I don't think a lot of other creator brands come with that much authenticity. And I think that's something that really gives us a distinct advantage. And I think it's something that's really important for a creator brand to succeed. There has to be authenticity. They can't just push the product for six months. They need to be excited to push the product for six years.

11:37This is something I wanted to ask, which is it's his brand. He's touting the brand. It's all over what he's talking about. But in forming this brand, how do you toe the line between making W the brand and as opposed to just an extension of Jake Paul? Do you know what I mean? Like you want it to sit on itself so that people maybe know it's associated with him, but also might see it in the stores. So how do you approach that? Yeah, it's a great question. I think there's a reason we didn't call the brand anything to do with Jake, right? a lot of people would have. We didn't because we're all aligned as a founding team that if this brand is going to be successful, it has to grow beyond Jake.

12:17And I think Jake is going to be a key part of this brand always. But as you kind of go up that customer adoption curve, as you're scaling up a brand, our first subset of customers is going to be Jake Paul fans. That is the audience we can tap into immediately. but already we're starting to expand the brand outside of Jake. So we've brought on, you know, our group of Avengers, we're calling them co-owners in the brand. We have Ruby Rose, we have Sugar Sean O'Malley, we have Arca Angel, we just announced Libby Dunn this week. We have a few more coming down the road. And, you know, that's our attempt to both tap into other audiences but also expand the brand beyond Jake so that it means just more than being a Jake Paul brand.

13:04So, you know, ultimately our goal is you're going to reach a point where people find out about this brand and don't know it's a Jake Paul brand. I always call out Skims is the best example of this. You know, Kim did an amazing job of tapping into her audience with Skims. There's so much deep authenticity between her and the brand and the product. But people who are buying Skims now do not have to be Kim Kardashian fans, nor do they even have to know that she's associated with the brand. I think oftentimes they don't. this next cohort of customers. So that's really how we're thinking about building W.

13:37We want the brand to take on a life of its own, have a look and feel that is its own. And eventually, you know, Jake will still be part of it, but slowly he'll start fading into the background as we really go mass. I think the Skims example is great. And you're totally right where that's like probably the gold standard when it comes to a creator led brand in terms of like the ability to grow and have someone at the helm of it, but also expand beyond that. In these early days, you're only a few months old, you're still very tethered to the person itself. When you're a celebrity, when you're a creator, especially someone like Jake Paul, who's a little bit of a provocateur, how do you think about if something controversial happens?

14:17Are you worried that that could impact the brand? For sure. I mean, there's always risk there. That is just the nature of doing a creator brand. I experienced that with my last brand. There's always a risk there. But I think the thing about jake is he's one of the smartest business minds i've ever worked with he knows he can be a provocateur and he's uh one of the best marketing minds in the world so we talk about it every week like he knows he's gonna give us a heads up if he's doing something that's gonna push the boundaries but i think he's a lot more calculated than most people would give him credit for and a lot of it is just kind of you know he's leaning into the persona that he has created for himself on the internet but he's very much aligned he knows that he needs to build this brand and that if he steps out of line it damages our it has the potential to damage us with retailers so he's a lot more aware and a lot more focused on the long-term success of this business and his brand so there's always a risk like you're going to have that with any celebrity you work with even the most vanilla celebrity will do something stupid from time to time So, but I think Jake, to his credit, is extremely business savvy and understands that more than almost any creator I've interacted with.

15:31That makes sense. I love that. You're right that even the most vanilla celebrity sometimes has something happen to them. One thing I really wanted to tap into, and you sort of talked about this, but I'd love to go more, is that like the consumer that you're going for with WR, especially younger people, sometimes these people, a lot of them if they're in their 20s, do make their purchasing decisions. But if you're talking to 10, 12, 13, 14 year old, they don't. So can you just talk about how you are thinking about reaching the younger gen alpha and below and how you sort of toe the line between talking to them, but also realizing you're probably talking to their parents as well?

16:07For sure. It's a great point. It's one that we talk about a lot day to day. So I think Jake's brother with Logan, with Prime, has had the same dynamic at play. I think there's two sides to it. One is we want to win over that consumer, right? We want this to be the product they're asking their parents to go get. That's going to be a really interesting dynamic to play out as we're about to enter kind of the holiday gifting season. And these personal care products are a really good, you know, stocking stuffer for that time of year. So we're trying to win that customer over by engaging with them with really fun content.

16:45We talk about that on our social media a lot. We want our social media to entertain our consumer. You know, if we get a Wall Street Journal article or we get something cool written about the company, we're not posting that on our Instagram because that doesn't add value to our followers or Jake's fans. That would be something we post because it kind of pushes our ego up. So we're really focused on entertaining and engaging with that younger demographic in a way that they're used to being interacted with. we're almost trying to frame our social media as if we are a creator ourselves. I think you see that come across in a lot of the media.

17:25And then in terms of winning over the mom, that's where it's a little bit more of the fundamental marketing approach where we're trying to work with mom influencers and targeting that mom on Facebook and really understanding what that mom cares about. I think there's two aspects that I really believe resonate with that mom. One is parents want to be loved by their kids. I think we're a really fun brand for them to gift to their kids so that they can quote unquote, you know, be the cool mom this holiday season is something we're thinking about. And then also once they actually double click on the product and the ingredients, one thing that I'm excited about is that our products are really, it's a great product.

18:04It works well. The formula and ingredient base is better than a lot of what you can buy at this price point from some of the major brands. And so that's how, that's how we're thinking about it. Like we want this to be a product that moms are actually like happy to give to their kids because it's going to be a little bit better for them than what they're probably using today. And that's something we're working to get across with moms by tapping into that audience more in an authentic way, targeting them with ads, helping educate them on the product, working with influencers within that ecosystem.

18:34Because you're right. Like if we look at our Walmart data, you know, the majority of our customer base is female. because a lot of times it's going to be the moms who are in Walmart or in the other retailers we're going to expand into next year who are making that purchase decision for their child. So would you say that means you kind of have to have two different brand voices that you sort of switch on and off depending on the content? Potentially. I don't think we have that today. Yeah. But I think depending on what you're trying to communicate, right? I do think we will have... It might honestly be the same voice, but it has a different tone when it's talking about the ingredients versus trying to entertain, if that makes sense.

19:14Makes sense. Yeah. You mentioned the holidays. We're heading into the holidays. I'm asking everyone about this, but I think it's especially interesting for yours because personal care, it's a stocking stuffer, but it's also not something that you would generally consider as like a holiday gift. Can you talk about the content you're making, what you're on the lookout for and how you expect the holidays to play into your overall end of your sales? Totally. I mean, the holidays is a high seasonality period for this category. There's a pretty big spike that you usually see around the category. The large portion of the American consumer is watching their wallets around the holidays.

19:48So I do think personal care products do end up being a really nice sweetener for gifts. And I think what we have is, you know, we have a brand that is cool right now. I hate to use that word, but it is. And kids are excited about it. And I think we're hoping to lean into that. I think there's a few different ways we're exploring it. One I've already spoken to, which is leaning into that mom audience, trying to help the mom understand, like, this is a brand from an amazing creator that your kid probably knows and probably loves. And if you want to be the cool mom this winter, like tap into our audience and our product base.

20:26I think we're also excited about trying to encourage that younger male to make, we call it make the switch with their dad. Oftentimes you've been using the same personal care brand for 20, 25 years as you just, you know, there's no other option. So trying to tap into that male audience as well, trying to encourage them to make the switch and then just really having some like fun. Now we have a lot of fun viral moments coming up with Jake and the Mike Tyson fight in just a few weeks. And we're really hoping to just to raise general brand awareness around that and then tap into that momentum we have going into the holiday season by just getting those audiences engaged and really trying to encourage gifting around W for the holidays, like going to your Walmart, going to the natural section where we have a big brand block and trying the product for the first time or getting it again if you've already bought it.

21:20Yeah, I wanted to ask actually about the Mike Tyson. So you're viewing that as a huge brand moment for you? For sure. I mean, I think one of the things we've done really, really well as a brand is leverage the potential for virality on social media. We've had about four different initiatives that have garnered us over 100 million views on social media as a brand. And I think that has gone a big way to helping us get a lot of brand awareness with our customer demographic. and I view the Mike Tyson, Jake Paul fight as another one of those moments. I always say to my team, you know, a lot of brands are going to focus on winning locally by throwing a cool party or having, you know, a street team giving out samples.

22:06We're still so small as a brand that I don't want to invest$100 ,000 in throwing a big party. What I want to do is invest$100 ,000 in trying to win on the internet. So that's a big focus of ours around Dallas is how do we do fun things, unexpected things, scrappy things that people are going to be like, wow, that's very cool and share it on social media. And that just has the opportunity to multiply our brand impression across our demographic. And this is something that I always try to ask people who are really good at this like you, which is how do you go about attribution for virality? Is it just you're going to see a sales bump after the Tyson fight?

22:44Or it's difficult to do that apples to apples, but I think you probably have some ways that you're trying to track that, right? We do. It's a bit difficult, especially because we're not D2C. You would have that kind of direct relationship. But I think for us, we're trying to collect a mosaic of data points. I think one is just social. So we look at tagged posts as a really good indicator of kind of brand awareness, brand coolness, brand health. We have really amazing data around tagged posts from consumers. We have like multiples, the amount of tagged posts than any other brand in this space. And we're even above a lot of the other creator brands that are touted as best in class.

23:30And that to me is like a sign that this brand is resonating and is just a steady march up. We also, you know, social media engagement, super important. How are your posts performing? What's your follower growth? That's kind of table stakes. But I do think you will see an uptick in growth when you have these big events and you're successful. Walmart sales are obvious. I think the hard part about this category is it's not as much of an impulsive buy as others might be. so I do think oftentimes sales increases are going to be a little bit of a lag and then another piece that we're tracking every month is brand awareness we have a data partner we're doing every month since we launched we do a national survey of our brand and all the other brands in the space to understand where we are sitting from a brand awareness perspective and that data has been amazing and really positive so far and it tracks in line across all the brands with where you'd expect them to be.

24:27So that's probably one of the big things we're doing to understand how these have an impact is like, okay, did we move brand awareness up? For the people who are aware of the brand, are we the brand of choice for them? And so far we have been by a long shot. And that's how we're viewing whether or not we're doing our job successfully. And then ultimately at the end of the day, it's about sales, right? So we want to convert that awareness into purchase and then encourage repeat. We're still only four months old as a brand. So a lot of that is still very new, but the data we're seeing is very encouraging.

24:58Got it. I wanted to ask, and this is something that I think about a lot, like you're in Walmart. I would say that's probably, in terms of your area, the gold standard or like one of the best accounts you can get. But also, we're in a very weird time in terms of distribution where it's like, I imagine you want to be in drugstores, but like a lot of the drugstores like CVS, Walgreens, they're not as good a retail experience as they once were. So when you are thinking about wholesale expansion, where do you want to go to get that impulse purchase? Because I imagine, is it just Walmart and then everything else falls into place?

25:31Or how do you think about that? It's a great question. We're thinking about it in a pretty multi-dimensional way. I think for that mom consumer, we want to be where people are shopping, right? For that parental consumer. So next year, we're going to be expanding a lot into grocery, where people are buying this category in grocery while they're doing their shopping, building the basket. We're also going to be expanding online, expanding into Amazon, which is a great place where people shop for these basics. And I think starting to tap into the Amazon-type channels is going to be very fruitful for this younger demographic, because that's probably where they're shopping.