#78 - Hayley Costanzo - PÄRLA [Managing Director]

0:00Hayley Costanzo:Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to the Unfounders. Today I am joined by the wonderful Hayley Costanzo who is the Managing Director at Parler. Now Parler make absolutely amazing plastic-free toothpaste and all-care products from their toothpaste tabs to their mouthwash tabs to these gorgeous new aluminium tubes which are fully recyclable, full of all sorts of great ingredients, no nasties, no fillers and it's an area that I am so passionate about when it comes to sustainability and health and wellness as are the team at Parler. Now, Hayley has been there pretty much from the start, nearly six years, and it's amazing to see their journey and how it's grown.

0:32Hayley Costanzo:It was great digging into Hayley's background. Her early days at Innocent and Strong Roots, doing field sales. There's so much in this around what Parlours stand for, what they believe in, why the whole dental industry needed changing with products like Parlours, their journey into retail, consumer behaviours. There is honestly so much in this. I really hope you enjoy it. Without further ado, let's get on with it. we all know that brand is important right but what if i told you it can impact growth and customer acquisition costs by up to 50 against ordinary are a brand agency who help founders marketing departments scaling teams ensure their brand is the most powerful tool for growth from brand strategy tone of voice and visual identity to helping you get retail ready with ongoing brand growth retainers they really are the full circle agency for growing your brand being the team are absolutely fantastic just imagine what they could do for your brand So what are you waiting for?

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1:38Hayley Costanzo:Hello and welcome back to Young Founders. Today I'm joined by the wonderful Hayley Costanzo. So Hayley, can you please let everyone know where you work and what your role is? Hi everyone, I'm Hayley. I work at Parlour and my role currently is Managing Director. So for those who have never heard of Parler, what is it? What do you guys do? Who's the founders? All that good stuff. Amazing. Yeah. So Parler is the future of toothpaste. So we are a plastic free B Corp certified oral care brand founded and made in the UK. So we were founded by three of the UK's leading cosmetic dentists. So Dr. Simon Chard, Dr.

2:11Rona Iskander and Dr. Adarsh Thanki, who essentially came together with the mission to just do oral care better. so both Simon and Rona were being used by the likes of Oral-B, Sensodyne on their TV ads and they were pushing all these products that fundamentally they just didn't really agree with and didn't align with how they were living their personal lives so pushing a lot of single use plastic not very good ingredients that are actually good for your oral health as well so they just saw essentially a better way to do it and that's how Parler was was born so we have a full range of plastic-free oral care so we started with tablets which is what a lot of people might know us for which is our toothpaste tablets and our mouthwash tablets and then i say this year 2025 we transitioned into our plastic-free toothpaste tubes so they're 100 aluminium all the way from the tube to the cap and they're supercharged with really functional high quality ethical ingredients to support not only your oral health but also your wider whole body health things like your oral microbiome vitamins and extra support like that so we currently trade we're DTC so you can grab Parler on subscription and it's delivered straight to your door so you never run out or we are also in Sainsbury's Waitrose Boots, Ocado with some other really exciting ones launching later this year.

3:26Hayley Costanzo:Amazing yeah I remember when Parler first came on the scene I think I spotted Simon at an event and I saw the like the toothpaste tabs and I was like what's this never never heard of it and it was my first time actually trying it and going oh wow this is really cool and I love the mission around plastic free and doing things better and obviously both simon and rona in particular i've seen some of their socials um online and again i think it's just so powerful like the brand you guys have built over the last however many years it's been now is phenomenal um and i think these new tubes which i'm holding on camera if you're watching the video i just think they're they're such a nice addition to the range because i imagine for a lot of people the toothpaste has like a it's just not quite the same so since launching these tubes how's that been for business have you seen like a the the tabs kind of tail off or the tab people like no I love my tabs yeah it's a great question I think one that we were maybe we did think about it for a long time but I think the truth is the tablets are so innovative and once you do use a tablet and you realize how easy it is to use the tablets and you you know you form a habit I think how many days does it take to form a habit 30 60 or something like that and once you are in the habit of using a tablet it's very difficult to then come away from using a tablet because you get so used to chewing it you know it's it is a slightly different mouthfeel so So people who are a diehard tab user, I think will always be a tab user.

4:42And we have retained all of our tablet users still with us. But I think for us, our goal has always been to provide better oral care that is plastic free. And if that is either with a tablet or now with these new pastes, that is our goal. And ultimately, we want to still offer the tablets, but bridge the gap between a plastic toothpaste tube and the tablet for people that weren't quite ready to switch their product format, but still wanted to brush better. And since launching the pastes, they've launched into Waitrose, now Ocado, a couple of other ones online, so Health and a few others. But yeah, they've completely changed the trajectory of the business.

5:15So I think for us, product market fit is something that I think a lot of people in challenger brands speak about. And I think now with these tubes, we've really found a strong product market fit. And I just think in the world of, you know, Yooka, a fantastic tool for looking at what ingredients are in things. People are becoming a lot more in tune to what they're putting in their body. and traditionally the likes of skincare and beauty products haven't necessarily been at the forefront of that movement it's been very focused on food and drink and it's really nice now to see people taking a lot more pride and actually what they're putting in or on their body in that way so yeah our paces have been game-changing for us this year yeah no i think i remember seeing a stat

5:54Hayley Costanzo:something like every toothpaste tube ever made is still in existence and it's it's those kind of things like when you hear that you're like wow i really should be doing something but if the options out there aren't great then obviously you someone might try and go meh I remember when I first went vegan I was like right I'm gonna go like fluoride free and find all these things and I tried just this horrendous like really sweet like naturally sweet product and I was like I'm not brushing my teeth with that like I'll just stick to stick to what I know and and then obviously as I've kind of progressed and known more things things like fluoride actually it's so important for the teeth so now I'm like no I definitely need a toothpaste with fluoride yeah exactly and I think I mean the fluoride one is a is a can of worms to open really because uh there's not a lot of other ingredients that have such controversy around them than fluoride but it's a very caveated point and i think you know 99.999 percent of dentists will tell you that you need a fluoride toothpaste it's the safest ingredient to protect against tooth decay and that is kind of the problem that we we saw when you know first launching parlor which was a lot of the natural or vegan or plastic free options on the market didn't have those right ingredients in to actually protect your teeth you know as you realized and there's not many things in life that we do more than brush our teeth like you do it twice a day hopefully every day of your life so if you can't form the habit and you know you are finding that what you're using isn't working for you it's very easy just to switch back so for us it was very important to get the product 100 % right and the packaging as well to ensure that actually making that switch is really seamless and a habit and a ritual that people can pick up and keep using yeah and one thing I definitely want to call out because I've just post about it on LinkedIn is the the toothpaste tube keys or whatever they're technically called but these things are if you if anyone listening has had those aluminium tubes so whether it's skincare or anything you can have these keys that will help you roll it down and I'm obsessed with the fact that Parlours is fully branded with the logo with the lips like it's nice and weighty like all these things so my whole point of the post was like these little things to me these are the touch points that build a brand and I absolutely love it so tell me about the journey into kind of deciding actually when we're going to make this like why do we go so big on making a branded experience yeah so simon who is our one of our co-founders is chief brand officer he is so hot on all of those sorts of details so i mean my background as i'm sure we'll dig into is more on the commercial side of things so whenever i'm looking at new products or things like that i'm obviously much more commercially minded with these things but simon just has the most wonderful eye for design and we went back and forth on these paste keys for absolutely months The second that we knew we wanted to launch the aluminium tubes, we knew that we needed this tool because it was something that, again, we call it the key to zero waste toothpaste.

8:33So really, really easy to make sure that you are getting everything out. Also just helps because the tubes are naturally a bit harder than plastic. So squeezing them can be quite difficult for some people. So we went back and forth on the design. And the lips is something that we absolutely love. You know, it's a brand lock up for us and something that lets people know we're oral care. It's a little bit fun and just makes looking at your toothpaste in the morning a little bit more enjoyable and a nice reminder to smile as well, which is what we're all about at Parlour.

9:01Hayley Costanzo:I love that. Now, we will definitely dig into your background and how you've got to where you are today. But when you first discovered Parlour, like how did you discover it and go, I want to work there? How did that journey come about? Yeah, it's a really interesting one. Actually, I have to talk about my previous role in order for how I segued into Parler because I used to work for Strong Roots, who are a wonderful frozen food company, who I'm sure you know well. And actually, I left Strong Roots to go and pursue a master's in something completely different and decided I wanted to do a little bit of a career change.

9:30And actually, when I was coming out of that master's, Emma Curtis, who is heads up Strong Roots in the UK, actually reached out to me with this amazing opportunity at Parler because she joined as a non-exec director. And she said, look, this brand hasn't actually launched yet, but they have such amazing potential. And I think you would really love the team. I think, you know, you could maybe go in and do something really special here and just help them get off the ground, launch into the UK market. So I met the founders and the rest is history, really. And I've joined, you know, when I first joined, it was very much on a part time basis because they didn't even have the product yet.

10:03They were just getting ready to launch into the UK, obviously with DTC first. And then obviously we opened up into retail. it's kind of evolved from there but that was how I first saw Parler they only had an Instagram page at that point no website really or anything so it was really grassroots stage and I think that's why it holds such an amazing you know special place in my heart because I've seen it go from nothing to the businesses today which is really exciting that's amazing so I guess even at the time you

10:28Hayley Costanzo:kind of heard of it did they have the tabs could you actually try anything yet was it so early it's like this is what we're going to create yeah so I hadn't even tried I actually had never to be honest heard about toothpaste tablet before and then trying to tell your like friends and family hey I'm actually going to do some work for this company that sells toothpaste but it's a tablet and actually getting that education you know nowadays I think if you ask someone do you know what a toothpaste tablet is most people know what a toothpaste tablet is but back then it wasn't really a thing there weren't many players in in the toothpaste tablet category if any um and it was yeah so it was just a really exciting point but yeah it's just amazing to see it grow into what it has.

11:06Hayley Costanzo:So you're literally the perfect unfounder experience right there, because this is the kind of essence of you're not a founder, but you've been there pretty much from the very start. So that's nearly six years ago. So you must absolutely love your job and what you do. What is it in terms of like the tangible moments? Is it the teams? Is it the mission? Is it just everything combined? Like what keeps you in this role as passionate as you are? That's a great question. To be honest, I mean, the mission is amazing. And I think working under the three founders that I do get to work with, their passion for this industry is like nothing I've ever experienced before.

11:38Like they genuinely care so much about the health and well-being of their patients and they all still practice as dentists and they all run their own clinics. So, you know, they're seeing patients and they are very much at the forefront of dentistry. And, you know, they were at the forefront of dentistry throughout the pandemic, which is when we launched. So it was just seeing their passion for actually producing oral care that is better keeps me driven as well but I'll be amiss without saying that it's also my team so the team we work with are super passionate about the mission they are they have that real scrappy challenger brand mentality which I think is what everyone in a challenger brand needs to have and you know the highs of a challenger being a challenger brand are so high the same way the lows are really low and it's such a roller coaster but you constantly chase those amazing highs and just seeing something grow and evolve because you have so much autonomy over what you're doing.

12:30And, you know, small things that you change have such measurable impacts that it's really exciting to be able to do that and have every day be so different in what we're doing as well.

12:39Hayley Costanzo:How big is the team now? And do you guys have an office? Are you remote working? Like what's the kind of the setup like for you at the moment? Yeah, so the team at the moment, so we have the three founders, three full-time staff, myself being one of them. And then we also work with some amazing fractional partners. So our fractional team is our finance team who are wonderful. And then in-house, we have our head of social and community and also a national account exec that supports on all of our retail listings. And then obviously the three founders are very much fingers in all pies, as am I really.

13:06But yeah, so we're a small team. No one's job is really just what their title is. Everyone has amazing spirit and gets involved with absolutely everything the business needs. So we're a very small but scrappy team. We do have an office. So our office is based on Wimpole Street in Marlebone, which is really nice because it's like the dental medical district. So nice for us to be able to be in that area. But we are looking for a new office at the moment. So we are looking to get a bigger space because the team's growing, the team's evolving as we are scaling this year, which is super exciting for me to bring more people into Parlour.

13:39Hayley Costanzo:Love that. And obviously, need to touch on the fact that the Ocado range has expanded, but I'm an Ocado shopper. I love it. And yeah, I'm always seeing what's new. And I know we spoke about Ocado in the past but yeah I think Ocado it's such a great way of having access to people especially from a DTC world I think it's like the natural progression like if people are already used to ordering direct online then it's like oh actually I can buy it with the rest of my shopping how's Ocado going for you guys like obviously you've just got the the pace live on there now yeah Ocado is so great so yeah we went um in January this year so just gone uh from two lines to seven lines so Ocado now holds the biggest parlor range and they are really championing us as a brand because I think Ocado are putting such a focus on better for you ingredients and I think that also extends out to their partnership with M &S because they're doing a lot at the moment around you know two ingredient bread and all these sorts of things that they're bringing out so yeah the Ocado team are amazing they've supported our mission from very early on and I think this year is going to be our biggest year well it will be our biggest year at Ocado and we have some really exciting things planned in which hopefully should line up with when we're bringing out our first TV ad this year.

14:45So hopefully Ocado is primed and ready to soak up all the traffic that might come.

14:49Hayley Costanzo:And if I'm not mistaken, is that part of the Sky Fund? Was that from that competition? Yeah. So we won the Sky Footprint Fund. It was back in July last year, we found out. And then we had the final showcase in November 25, where we got to present our TV ads. Yeah. For those who don't know, the Sky Footprint Fund is an amazing initiative that I would implore any challenger brand who is doing better for people or the planet in whatever capacity that might be to apply because you just never know what's going to happen. I remember I actually applied on the very last day because I didn't think we'd win.

15:21And then we actually got through and won. So Sky give two million pounds in advertising spend to brands. So there's six winners, three consumer good brands and three charity brands or social initiative brands. So the winners this year were Tony's Chocolonely, Fussy Deodorant and Parler. So all three of us got to share in that prize pot to put our first TV ad out, which, yeah, should be going live later this year, which is pretty exciting.

15:45Hayley Costanzo:Fab. And I am a big customer of all three brands. So yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah. Sadly, we put ourselves in. We didn't get through. We got shortlisted, but yeah, didn't make the cut. But no, I think it's absolutely fantastic. If anyone listening is working for a brand and you're looking for that TV ad, it's such a good thing to just get involved with, get involved with that community. I love that side. And honestly, I actually had no idea how sustainable and like how sustainably focused Sky as a brand were. Like the work they are doing in removing plastic from the oceans, championing small sustainable brands.

16:16It's actually incredible. And we got to go to their HQ, which is its own little city, and to just see the work they're doing and to get that experience. It's not something that challenger brands typically get the experience to go through at this early stage, you know, filming a TV ad and going through that process. So yeah, if anyone does apply, I would encourage you strongly just to put your hat in the ring because even just doing the application and going to meet the team is, yeah, honestly, one of my favourite memories of Parlour to date.

16:41Hayley Costanzo:Love that. Now let's turn the clock right back and go back to when you were young and growing up. And what did you think you were going to do when you got older? Like when you were a child, you're like, when I grow up, I want to do this. Actually always growing up, saw myself as being a lawyer or a barrister, which now I think about it is probably the furthest from a career I would be good at. And then I did want to sort of go into science, which is what I went and studied at university. So I studied biochemistry for my original degree. And actually, it was something I was very, very passionate about.

17:11But when I was at university, I was doing the classic applying for grad schemes, getting endlessly rejected for things. And it does make you think, you know, what do I actually want to do with my life? And that was when I started working with Innocent drinks. So Innocent, I'm sure everyone knows who Innocent drinks are. They don't need an introduction. They have an amazing university trade ambassador program, which I think is still running. I'm not too sure, but I always describe it as basically being the healthier version of the Red Bull program. So we got given loads, slightly less glamorous.

17:42We didn't get the midi to drive around in. We actually got given a bike, which was lovely, but not quite as cool. Very on brand. Very on brand and a watermelon helmet as well, which I think I wore once and had to leave it home ongoing. Not quite as glam as the Red Bull Mini, but that was amazing for me because it actually gave you a bit of a taste of what field sales is and actually going out to university stores, campuses, doing samplings, championing the brand, supporting with POS inside university locations. And actually that was a really fantastic learning opportunity for me and opened the way to my first job out of university, which was in field sales.

18:17So I think I've had a slightly strange segue into the world of sales but I think Parler now has given me that sweet spot between being able to use my science background in a way but also allowing me to do what I love most which is building a brand and sales.

18:33Hayley Costanzo:Yeah no I think from all the conversations I've had now this is nearly 80 conversations in field sales is one thing that comes up over and over again in terms of it's so good for kind of rejection therapy actually putting yourself out there like having that high of actually getting a yes or a win so for you obviously it was the sales ambassador with innocent and then going into strong roots what was that experience like at strong roots and doing field sales for because at the time this is what 2018 this is when kind of strong roots were growing as a brand people kind of heard of them it was still that early days of like what is this cauliflower hash brown so yeah what was that like for you going out and actually doing this it was yeah i mean it's character building and that has a job whenever i see field sales on a cv now anyone tells me they're in field sales.

19:15I just think about how strong they are because it is such a tough job. And I remember I turned up on my first day and Emma Curtis, who I mentioned, had hired me. And I think we had a lovely morning together in the office. And then she said, right, off you go. And I remember thinking, oh, I'm just out on my own to do this now. But she was honestly so supportive. And the training I got from Emma was unbelievable. And that combined with being out in the field, it's very scary. Don't get me wrong. You will get told to leave stores. I was digging digging around freezers, you know, moving all of our stock, getting us those extra facings.

19:48And it is very exciting. Like we just launched in Sainsbury's, I remember, on my first day. So my job was, right, go out to every Sainsbury's store and compliance check. And yeah, the highs of doing that was amazing. But yeah, you do get a lot of doors shut in your face and politely asked to leave certain Tesco stores, which was always fun and many tears were shed. But in the grand scheme, it's actually amazing for me now because you know what's going on at a store level and being able to actually you know know how their systems work and what the back of the store actually looks like has helped in so many other ways in building parlor because um yeah even like your srp design if you have an amazing srp when it's out in the stock room it's going to be really easy for you know colleagues to find and bring out whereas if you just got a brown box with a bit of tape on it's going to be really hard for them to locate your single box of a product srp is a sore spot

20:37Hayley Costanzo:for us at the moment in frozen because everyone's so anti them so we're we're trying solutions and trying to find a way to have our our slot in the freezers yeah totally align um i mean there's so many great snacks brands drinks brands and obviously like yourselves having those srp units so the shelf ready pack for anyone listening that doesn't know when you see a product like stacked in this beautiful box on shelf where they've ripped the front off that's what it is so yeah i think it does go a long way but like you said about being rejected from some tesco's before we'd actually gone live with packed i actually went in with some packed products put it on the shelf was taking photos and as i was walking out i got stopped by security like did you put something in your bag without paying.

21:11Hayley Costanzo:I'm like, no, no, you don't list it, but you are going to like, so yeah, just be careful with that side. Yeah, I love that. We actually recently, you might have seen on LinkedIn or our socials, we did a video announcing the launch of our new lines at Ocado. And we actually ordered before they'd launched, we ordered an Ocado shop to Simon's house, our founder. And basically when the driver got there, we were like, please, can we just hijack the van five minutes really quickly film this. And we met our buyer yesterday. And she said, how did you get the van like everyone in the office is so confused how did you do it and i was like being really scrappy and offering the driver a cup of tea and a big bag of parlor products and he was he was you know in great spirits about doing it but it's those sort of scrappy things that are always a bit nervous for you to do as a challenger brand but always pay off in the end yeah every time we have a new new product on a car that we're packed i'm taking the photo of the van and i've done it for like impossible brew and even like newtonic recently i took a photo and oh we're gonna have that photo but yeah the drivers when you speak to them they're like oh yeah i actually had a he's like a west african source just went live and they again they got in the van they're like can we get in here and do this i think the drivers kind of love it it's all part of they are super passionate people so i think actually getting them involved and on board and as you said if you can give them a cup of tea or biscuit or something and keep them happy like yeah i love that they're fantastic vehicle drivers so from your like both innocent and strong roots now absolutely mega brands doing brilliant things in your time working there was there anything like Like you obviously mentioned Emma and the way she trained you.

22:36Hayley Costanzo:So obviously that's a huge learning. But from an Innocent perspective, I've had multiple people now on who have been at Innocent in one phase or another. And it's always the same things. Like, did you get to go to Fruit Towers? Did you get to go and see the team? Or was it very much like, no, you're at university. Stay there and do that. Yeah, we got to go to Fruit Towers. And I remember that was so exciting. Like, what a head office. For anyone that actually gets the opportunity to work there five days a week, I think it's a really fantastic culture. And the team is so lovely. And there's just such quirky little bits about the office that are really fun.

23:06And their social team is there and obviously their socials. I think they were one of the biggest brands to pioneer being humorous on social media and having that real connection with customers over social media. So yeah, they're pioneers in so many ways. But yeah, Fruit Towers was amazing. And obviously unlimited smoothies was a fantastic perk of the job. One which, yeah, I'd quite like now, to be honest.

23:27Hayley Costanzo:Yeah. As long as you've got your parlor afterwards to brush your teeth, because obviously smoothies get a bad rep for fruit sugars. But I'm like, come on, guys, it's a smoothie. Yeah, it's not so bad. Everything in moderation anyway. For what you're doing at Parler now then, so obviously you've been there, as I said, nearly six years and you've kind of climbed the ranks. So national account manager, senior national account manager, head of sales, now MD. Like what does a typical week or month look like? Like I always ask everyone this and everyone's like, there is no such thing. Even for myself, I do not have a typical week.

23:55Hayley Costanzo:But for you, if you look across, whether it's the year or your cycles like what is your day-to-day or week-to-week involved do you do any like hands up everyone kind of comes together on meetings like any of those kind of tangible things because I think it's really interesting to know how different businesses operate yeah I mean you've obviously you've hit the nail on the head no no day or week is the same but I do try and give myself a bit of structure because obviously being a small brand where I wear an ops hat one day a sales hat the other day in marketing or finance even like by the way none of which are necessarily my biggest strong suits.

24:26Like I feel very comfortable talking to retailers or in the sales side of the business. But I mean, as with anyone who enters a challenger brand, you will become a jack of all trades and you will learn so rapidly things that you would never even get experience like within a big brand. And I'm so grateful for that because, you know, before Parler, I had no idea how to deliver into a supermarket, but now I could drive the pallet there myself and feel pretty comfortable about it. So in terms of the week structure, we always have a weekly team meeting at the end of the week and that's really nice everyone shares their wins for the week what they're working on for the next week and also what their big learners for the week so that's a really nice time because you know bearing in mind some of the team we only do two or three days a week in the office so it's really nice to be able to actually have Friday everyone shares you know just a nice social cash up as well not that we don't see enough of each other but just a nice time to reconnect and then on Mondays we tend to protect our Mondays just to obviously review sales in the previous week.

25:23Myself and the founders always have a nice catch up on Mondays and Fridays as well, just to bookend the week. And then throughout the week, it is really just dependent. One week can be very heavily supply chain focused or, you know, sales focused if we have, you know, JBP planning going on and things like that, which we're currently in the middle of at the moment, which is where a lot of our time's going. And then obviously for me, the most exciting part of Parler and the part that I still love the most is doing pitches, you know, speaking to new customers winning new business so we have a lot of that ongoing at the moment which is is really exciting and where a lot of the team focus is at the moment yeah no absolutely love that i think