Scaling Chaos: The Wild Ride of Clutch with Annabel Hay

0:01I had this product and I was like wow how amazing is this sold a few I don't know maybe like 10 to my friends and then uh it was about three months later i uploaded a tiktok that then ended up going viral went to bed woke up in the morning it had over 9 million views 420 000 likes and then we sort of sold out of that those 5 000 units then i was getting a response from all these people that had finally received their clutch glue waters after spending probably 20 on shipping and waiting like three weeks to receive it and so many of the tubes had exploded because i thought it might have been the air pressure.

0:37I was like, oh, is it like, is it the air pressure? Like, I don't really know. That is so frustrating. And then I was like, holy shit. So then I'm like refunding everyone because I'm like, oh my God, like this is the worst. Welcome back to Wild Hearts. I'm your host, Mason Yates. I'm on the investment team at Blackbird Ventures. Annabelle Hay is the founder of Clutch, which is a special product that prevents clothes from slipping. And in this episode, we cover the hire that changed everything. The$60 ,000 trap that nearly killed clutch in retail. The genuine shark from Shark Tank that tried ripping her off.

1:12Managing the absolute chaos of scaling supply chains and selling 5 ,000 units overnight after going viral on TikTok. Annabelle is charismatic and fun. She does it all while delivering a masterclass and going from zero to one for a consumer product business. Let's dive in.

1:33when there was enough time that passed and you had hired like your first few hires how did that change your mindset on building a business i think that for a long time and and this kind of also um i guess flows into doing a cap raise so with ollie i found that obviously paying him money was something where i was like oh it's this big overhead like employees are expensive and like oh you know is this going to be really expensive or is it going to be more expensive than what we're actually getting out of him like truly like how much value is he bringing to the business but now I've realized I've now got so much more time in my day to do what I should be doing which is you know business development and R &D and sort of thinking five years down the line and for him he's obviously worth his weight in gold when it comes to just the general day-to-day operations and I've realized that I needed both of those resources to be able to grow this business both uh in the current day and also you know looking five years down the track so it's just been I was just so wrong when it came to kind of you know thinking that I needed to control everything all the time and now that I've kind of relinquished this control and I've managed to find also good help um I hardly inducted him at all like I was I literally just kind of started putting him on emails and I was just like figure it out and he just did he did like he he got it he was always asking the right questions like I never felt that he was just like oh and and but what are you doing here and what are you doing there and and and i never had to explain anything twice just like got it and i was like god that is just just worth it's way in gold and i feel like we also get this a lot with eucalyptus employees i'm sure that you get this all the time but like they're amazing that you all of those eucalyptus people i don't think i've ever met a bad eucalyptus employee in my life so i don't know what kind of voodoo they're doing over there but thank you because it's helping me what a sigh of like freeing relief 100 100 i feel off my shoulders i just feel so much more calm like i just feel like not everything is like catastrophic all the time it's great how did you decide who your first high would be so we knew ollie socially for a long time he was always really useful just when it came to just general day-to-day questions because obviously he was at eucalyptus and I was this was like right in the early days I think we just launched clutch I think the day that we launched clutch was the 1st of December 2022 and then we were at a boxing day party um and he is like a family friend's boyfriend so he was there and this is the first time we were meeting and we were just chatting and he was like oh what do you do and I was like oh you know I'm a construction manager but you know I've just released a new product and then from there he was like tell me everything And he was like, you know, what's your cost of acquisition?

4:23What's your cost of goods and all of these things? And then I was sort of giving him all this information. He was like, please let me help you. Like I can help you, please. And I was like, and just out of the goodness of his heart, just there were no intentions there. He was just like, just let me help you. I know a lot more than you in a nice way. Like, you know, I can guide you in the right direction. And I went, absolutely. So he was literally like someone that I leaned on just as a resource, a free resource for literally like two years. And then when we were doing our raise, it was around the time we were on Shark Tank and Silk was there at our viewing night and she met Ollie there serendipitously and he was just talking about how he worked at Uke and like all of these things.

5:04So obviously, you know, just Blackbird and Uke, go hand in hand. And they were talking, talking, talking and then Silk messaged me that night and went, if you don't hire that man, I will. And I went, okay. Shout out Silk. let's start out so i think it was just like the easiest it was just the easiest uh easiest thing now we're kind of getting to a point where i'm like well obviously not every high is going to be that easy um but now that we've got some really good foundations um we're sort of now looking for a resource to help lucy out on the creative side of things um so that's what we're looking for but again that's a little bit more niche a little bit more subjective um someone who also lucy needs to gel with day in, day out, you know, it's hard to find.

5:48But I've just lucked out on all these side of things. But good luck, Lucy. Hopefully that goes well for you. I was getting the update refresh on Clutch's socials and it probably seems like you would have definitely cracked over 100 million views across social media platforms. Yeah, 200 million if you count. Wow. If you count Davey Fogarty. um so he i don't know who is david foggity so the david foggity um who you know we all know and love is the oody man but so he was obviously a shark on shark tank and he posted our like pitch i guess like on his tiktok and within a day i think he got over 50 million views and i think now it's up at that 60 mark or something like that and i didn't actually see it because we weren't tagged in it or anything.

6:42And then someone through a friend, she sent it to me and she goes, this is crazy. And I was like, Oh my God, this is where all the sales are coming from. Like, it's been like two days. And I just had like, I was like, we're not doing anything like that different. I was like, what's going on? And then of course I realized that it was that video. And then I sent him a cheeky text and I was just like, huh, like, how's that video going on your feed? And he was just like, I'm so pissed. He's like over half of the total amount of likes on my TikTok page come from that one video of you. It's like, you're welcome.

7:19Anyway. What do you think has worked so well with Clutch's brand? I think the founder-led story people love. I think that this is something that has really, you know, run home to me is that people really resonate with the story about like having a wardrobe malfunction and being like, hey, it sucks. It's a thing that every girl has experienced once in their life, at least once in their life. And I knew there needed to be a better way. And so when people hear that story about being like, true, it would be so much easier to glue myself into my clothes. And also, I want to use it on my bike shorts, my high heels and my socks.

7:54And there are all these diverse ways that you can use it. And I just think that me telling that story really helps people understand that like I'm just an everyday gal I'm not this like unattainable celebrity where you have this like parasocial relationship with me I'm just like you and I think that that's been incredible in terms of our brand strategy that also happened accidentally I'm sure I said the word brand strategy but to be honest our brand strategy to in the beginning was free we had no money so I was like well the only way that we're going to do this is if I talk to camera if I demonstrate it on my own body um and then that's just happened to be the way that people respond best to us we have UGC creators coming out of our ears being like you know let me create content you know and all of these things and whenever we post it it just doesn't perform they just they kind of just want to see Lucy and I which is great definitely to an extent but like it's getting to the point where I'm we're obviously so busy and then Lucy's like sticking the camera in my face being like, please.

8:55She was just like, please. She's like being some content. I'm like, oh my God, oh my God. And so I know that it's probably not, it's not a solution that has much longevity, but I think for the time being, it's really worked for us. And until we get to a point where we've got some like, you know, big budgets and some big social proof, I think that for now, that's just the way that people love to be served clutch is is through Clutch's mom herself. They love it. What else have you learned about content on TikTok? Anything that's just like easily digestible and solving a problem. Like the amount of times we've uploaded the exact same video and I'm like, how can this go viral again?

9:34And it does. And you're just like, well, like that's what people just want to be served. They just want a reasonable, good solution. They don't want anything glossy and nice as in, I mean, TikTok and Instagram, there's such different beasts like tiktok you're obviously following you like you're not really following people it's just a for you page and it's just algorithm based and you just get fed it and you're like oh cool i've just discovered this new thing and then you sort of go and do your research and then you know discover whether you want to buy it or not or whatever you know buy into the stream but tiktok and instagram has just been so much harder in that people obviously follow what they want to see on on instagram and so that's been really hard to sort of curate a bit more of a I guess a community over on Instagram.

10:17So I think that that's been quite hard. We recently have sort of cracked the Instagram code when now we're sort of getting a bit more of a community over there, but they're two completely different audiences. Like we find that the TikTok audience, they may be between, I'd say 16 to like 30, I'd say like maximum age. And then you've got your Instagrams, which is kind of 16, sure. But like our median age that's seeing our content on Instagram is like 26 to like 40 year olds. So we've realized that the two strategies were that it wasn't a one size fits all. We needed to kind of cater to both of those markets.

10:54And I guarantee you, if I upload a video that went viral on TikTok to Instagram, it doesn't go viral and vice versa. Like they just are so different. So yeah, we just had to kind of throw everything at the wall and see what sticks, but what sticks on each platform has been completely different. So if I went on the Instagram page, which I didn't do, I just downloaded TikTok for it. I would lose myself to TikTok. What sort of content would I see? Because now that you know that the cohorts are different in age, how does that change your perspective on what gets filmed? I mean, I think with Instagram, we try and make things a little bit glossier, a little bit more curated, things that are a bit easier for people to see.

11:39So if we come up on their uh even their um what's it called on reels like when you're on instagram you're sort of just doing a deep dive like what are people going to want to see when they go onto our landing page and it's like curated titles of like thumbnails of like okay well this video is this and this video is is that and and you know they can kind of cherry pick what they want to watch based off like what problem they think they want to solve on their own right um as in on tiktok it's a little bit loose and fast like i also do a lot of a lot of kind of just like i I don't know, daily vloggy type stuff.

12:10Like I kind of just pick up the camera and I'm like, oh, did you know my sleeves are clutched right now? Like, I don't know. And it just comes to me in the moment. As in like Instagram is a little bit less spontaneous, I'd say in that way. So that's probably the difference in the feeds is just like TikTok is like raw Annabelle day in the life, like kind of just figuring it out day by day, hour by hour. As in like Instagram, I feel like people really perceive us to be this like big, cool brand when like it feels anything but, to be totally honest, when you're in the trenches. But blessed that I make it seem easy when it's not.

12:48Effortless. When the camera goes on, the show must go on. The show does go on, that's for sure. Loves a camera, loves to talk. We all know that. how did you think about capturing all of that essence in clutch's brand which is elite it's a great brand um it's so lucy and i um and like down to just like how we decorate our houses the the color scheme that's on clutch is like pretty much like what's in our what's in our bedrooms and like what's in the living room you know it's like actually quite funny and and it's something that i haven't picked up on until other people have pointed it out like i love pink like pink's my favorite color and I love blue and people are like literally me with pink and blue nails right now but um and people are like oh yeah you're always wearing clutch colors and I'm like makes sense to be honest like I like those colors like that's why it sort of resonated with with us in the first place and that was the branding what was your question around again sorry I've taken a little sidetrack there how did you capture the essence of all of those stories in the brand and And I think like a really powerful lesson is that it is reflective of your authentic self and what brings you out of bed, which is really cool.

14:01Definitely. I think also too, like there were a lot of really intentional decisions when it came to like the colors that we were going to use, for instance, like going to the psychology behind like what would drive someone on a retail shelf to like go and pick up your product and kind of play with it and be interested in it. because when you're competing for eyes and on a shelf, you really want to make sure that, you know, you sort of have a point of difference. And so for us, obviously our strategy when we launched was just e-com and then, you know, we hoped for the best when it came to retail and now we're obviously doing quite well in that space.

14:34When it came to point one being we wanted it to be environmentally friendly, clutch is made of 100 % recycled materials that is then 100 % recyclable. What's the easiest way to convey that without the packaging being green? that was like one thing where I was like oh we actually tuned and fro for a long time about like do we make clutch green can you imagine if clutch was green like now I'm like oh that's so weird but like it doesn't make any sense but like we were kind of like right how are we gonna you know convey that and so then it was like you know the craft paper that we use obviously conveys that kind of message that you know it's recyclable and it's cardboard and you know that kind of thing then it came down to just like the color scheme that we used red and pink and blues and stuff like that are really easy colors to just like that pop on on a counter we also knew that if we were going to utilize those colors and also hint hint uh release some new products we could utilize that same color scheme but like invert it or change things around it just gave us a little bit more flexibility to kind of give us three or four different sort of colors that then we can kind of, you know, swap in and out with each other depending on what our messaging is, but something that still feels like clutch.

15:48So if you were to pick up a clutch glue tube and then you were to pick up a new product that were releasing tube, you'd know that their family without really reading that it's clutch. So that was sort of something that we thought about, the long-term sort of strategy of our creative. So that was actually not an accident. What we landed on was fleshed out and mulled over and peer reviewed for probably about a year before we landed on what we ended up manufacturing. Wow. Yeah. But it was fun. What sort of names did you go through before Clutch? Like - Oh, names. Clutch is Clutch. It's Clutch. It's Clutch.

16:27Like, can't beat it. You can't beat it. Like, literally, it's just the best. I will show you what I wrote in - I've got - I wrote a note in my phone. Yeah. okay so these were the names that i wrote down for clutch it's literally in my notes up on my phone the first one that i've written down here is side stick the next one is underdog then there's under pup deputy like these are so so bizarre deputy skin mate clutch unstuck and firm that's like basically like the the ones that i'd put here then i remember i wrote these down on a post-it note and i stuck them on my fridge and then just over the course of like a week i ended up just crossing the ones that i didn't like i was kind of like oh it's just like not not really sticking with me pun intended and then the only one that was left was clutch and then we started kind of i remember mentioning it to friends who were a part of my testing team with like the actual formulas and things and then I was like thinking about like calling it clutch maybe and then they all started to kind of like call it clutch and then I would get texts from my friends being like I'm like clutched in right now and I was like that's the one no this is it like I've created a verb I was like this is excellent and then that's when I was like no that's like an absolute no-brainer to me and then that's when I was like all right trademark the absolute hell out of that so good like anybody trying to get your hands on the name clutch because it ain't going to happen.

18:00It ain't happening. But it's just the best word and it's just perfect. It's one syllable. It's powerful. It's punchy. And people know exactly what you're referring to when it comes to being clutched in. Like, I don't know, people just refer to it as that rather than being like, oh, I'm glued in or like I'm taped in. Like, no, I'm clutched. Why did you want to have clutch in retail stores? In retail? So the main, when we went viral for the first time, the main response that we got from people was being like, oh, like I needed this on the weekend or like, I've only just seen this and it's Friday and I need it on Saturday.

18:35And for us, that was like, that was enough feedback to be like, well, we obviously know that we belong on a shelf, especially when it comes to acquiring a customer for the first time. A lot of the time, maybe the barrier to entry is driving them to your website and then they may be paying for shipping and like there's just like too many barriers when it comes to actually converting that sale and so that's why I was like no a retail strategy goes hand in hand with an e-com strategy I was like we need to do both we need to balance both and so that's when I just started guessing email addresses and then one day I like I think I'd guess like maybe 300 this one fateful day and it was a price line email address and a buyer came back to me almost immediately and she was like oh my god i have seen this all over my social media yes like please send me samples this is really cool and i was like thank you that's a lot sent her samples and it was i'd say it's about october at this point um october 2023 and then she was like the problem is uh i kind of want this on shelves right now but like i don't know how quickly we're going to move how is this going to work we don't have space on the shelf because obviously when they put their planogram together which is where everything sits on a shelf everything had been allocated their spot so it's like hard to like find space and so she was like this is maybe a way around that we can do it which was like some hang cell thing that hangs at the end of the aisle um that they can kind of just put anywhere in the store and then hopefully range it like that what also worked for us was that the packaging was is quite small at the time we're changing the packaging now so it takes up a little bit more real estate but at the time it was small and she was like it's gonna get it's gonna get lost on the shelf like is there a way that we can present this so that people know what it is when they kind of see it or they can get more information from like a qr code like on that hang so so we were like yep we can work with you on that so we ended up she was like if you can make this stock for me i think the first purchase order was about i'd say like 8 000 units or something like that which was definitely the most we'd ever manufactured obviously um not anymore at the moment we're obviously churning through it but to us i was like holy shit i'm about to be about to be a multi-billionaire that's what it felt like and then um and then and then of course it's a big moment like 8 000 units in one conversation crazy and then she was like uh by the way our dc's close on the 1st of december So like, can you try and like, I'm going to give you my word that we're going to arrange this.

21:09Can you please go ahead and manufacture this? Blah, blah, blah. So you can imagine we were manufacturing things kind of on a like good faith basis that like this was going to work out. Then designing these hang cells, which aren't cheap. I think they're about$20 a thing, but then we had to go, I think we did like four or 500 stores to begin with. So like that was obviously then like just big costs because we didn't have heaps of money in the bank, you can imagine. So we were just kind of, you know, hoping for the best really. And obviously it did all work out and it's been amazing. We got it in the DC on, I think it was the 26th or the 27th of November.

21:46Thank God we just got it through. And then by Christmas time, it was on all the shelves and it became their third bestseller within a week of launch and is still their third bestseller. to this day. Wow. It doesn't sound like you needed to drive any urgency in that decision. No. Which is a lesson in and of itself. Like the product did the selling and drove the urgency. A hundred percent. I think that we had enough virality that people were like, oh, okay. Yeah. They're in price line. And also I think in Australia, people love price lines. Like they're this beautiful curated store. They're a little bit more boutique.

22:26Like they love it. Like it doesn't have that, I know this is like probably not going to age well, but like you sort of chemist, that warehouse vibe, that warehouse, you know, and it's just like, and it's cramped and like there's Larry music playing. And I just feel like I'm in a fever dream. I can't find anything half the time. It's in like price. I just like felt like the sort of la-di-da, like Alice in Wonderland version of it, which I was just kind of like, I just love it. It feels right for us. And so once we've gone in there, it's amazing. now the feedback that we get from people from our Priceline store managers sometimes I just walk in and I'm like how's your clutch doing today and they're like oh my god it's amazing and then they give us all these ideas they're like can you give us a little thing that I can put on the counter I want to put it here here here here like they just love it they're obsessed I think like Priceline were definitely we just we struck gold really with them we did we got really lucky um hasn't been the case for all of our retailers Woolworths has been a fucking nightmare to say the least um But then CVS over in the States have been absolutely wonderful.

23:30Like it just totally depends on, I think, the culture of the business but also just how big of a conglomerate it is and how good their supply chain is. I think it didn't help for us in that like when we went into Woolies, that's when all the strikes were happening. And so like it was really hard to like get things out on shelves and they were understaffed and things weren't sort of in the right place at the right time. So there are definitely some things that sort of do affect it that are out of your control but for the most part i think our retail strategy has been pretty pretty correct the the one thing that we're really trying to work on at the moment though is convenience again it's not a product that you need until you do sometimes you're like in the uber and you're like oh my god like my clothes are falling off me and i saw that thing on tiktok and i should have bought it like whatever it is and and but where do i get it right now and of course like price lines will close maybe at 9 p.m if you're if you're lucky how do we get into that convenience side of things that are open 24 hours a day.

24:25It's your 7-Eleven, it's easy mart on the corner, something that's reliable. That to us is a part of our retail strategy moving forward, which seems to be quite well received from people when I tell them that. I'm like, I think it's pharmacy inconvenience for retail. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for your opinion. What do most people get wrong about retail? like what are some of the mistakes that you've seen so many i'll tell you all the mistakes that we've made um the the one thing that surprises everyone when i tell them is that when it comes to uh your item being on sale i guess before all of this i thought that woolies are like you know just for argument's sake is woolies it's price line this is also general across every retailer so i'm not singling anybody out here woolies don't sue me this is just what everybody does so for instance if clutch is on sale three dollars off who pays for that sale price i always kind of thought that oh well it's woolly's trying to drive traffic into their store and you know churn more stock and whatever it might be uh completely wrong the sale price is actually set and also funded by uh the supplier meeting clutch so what happens is if the sale goes for a week and i sell a hundred units in that week on that sale price of$3 off.

25:46They're going to send me then an invoice for how much I owe them back because they're always maintaining their margin of 29 Australian dollars for a tube. On top of this, normally when you go on sale, they'll also be like, okay, well you need to pay for a spot in our catalog and you need to spend$20 ,000 on ads driving people to the store so on so forth so you need to then show them that you're uh participating in this sale um you know wholeheartedly instead of just kind of hoping for the best that your product's on sale they will tell you to spend so normally when it comes to going in retail you might be budgeting sixty thousand dollars a year just in marketing for them plus then funding those sale prices so a lot of the time you have to do a feasibility to be like can i even afford to be in here which like a lot of the time the answer is no and and like yeah and sometimes that's the play like sometimes i've spoken to people that have done it as well where they're like well it's kind of been more exposure for us that like you know we're on the shelf and people are seeing us and comparing us and whether they buy it or not doesn't really matter it's kind of put us on the map totally understand that but for us we're sort of not at a point where like we're sort of willing to just lose money and hedge our bets on on something like that that we can't really tell.

27:04The other thing is that you cannot really quantify how good your marketing is when it comes to retail. So obviously we do a lot of e-commerce marketing, performance marketing when it comes to buying Clutch via clutchglue.com. But also a lot of people want to buy it at a retailer and we have a store finder on our website that says, you know, you can buy it, put in your postcode and here are, you know, five different stores that you can buy it from. And you, you genuinely cannot quantify how effective your marketing is when it comes to driving traffic into stores. Like you just don't, what are you going to do for, you can't get customers to fill out a survey every single time they're by clutch to say like, where did you hear about us?

27:45So that's something that. I mean, we can, it's just been like, it's just really hard. And like for Lucy, especially where, where we have to show our, We obviously want to go through our own marketing results and sort of try and determine what's working and what's not. But when we don't have any of that retail kind of response, like we don't even really know what's working and what's not. You kind of just like hope for the best. And then, you know, if you had a good week, you're like, okay, well, I think that maybe I can like say that that was, you know, good marketing strategy. I don't really know.

28:19But then you've got to change it all the time. Like it's constantly changing thing. and like any good e-commerce brands that are also in retail out there, you'll notice you'll never receive the same ad twice. They're just hammering. There's like 300, 400 different ad units a day. The best case example of this is High Smile. I think they do about five. They run 500 different ads a day. Wow. And no two days are the same either. So can you imagine how many staff are just sitting there on a meta ads dashboard just loading the ads? Wow. It's crazy. so yeah like i mean we're obviously not at not at that point lucy's just loading the ads and i'm just making some silly little tiktoks but you know you you get the gist so i think that that's the main thing with retail is that people are like it's that more margin verse you know i guess more margin more volume debate between your e-com and your retail and sort of that fine line between strategizing what do you want your split to be do you want to be oversaturated in retail and you can get it everywhere or do you want to kind of try and maintain a level of exclusivity about it with your retailers?

29:25Totally up to you. It depends what kind of product it is and whether you identify it as a mass market product or something that's a little bit more niche. No right answer. I love those two examples. You mentioned manufacturing, but I would love to just learn about the steps before a customer receives their clutch glue and like perhaps some war stories on the challenges in that supply chain yeah uh supply chain has been crazy and to be honest we've i'm really only probably at a place right now where i feel like it's pretty pretty good like it's consistent and at least i know what to expect um to begin with when i first had my first 5 000 batch of clutch clutch glue units that i'd ever made i had made the packaging out of China so a tube in a box made in China which uh has to be done if you want it to be made of 100 % recycled materials Australia doesn't do any of that it all gets offshored and then yes I know it all comes back to Australia it's done but like that's just the way that it works so had to get the packaging made in China I had no choice then I air freight that over to Sydney and then it lands in my parents garage and then at this at this point I'm still living in Hong Kong right so like my parents are like trying to do all this for me the absolute truth is like thank you mom and dad to literally everything and then I was like I found a manufacturer in Sydney it was like up the road it was in like French's Forest and there were only two I think I inquired at about like 150 different manufacturers and only two of them came back saying that they could make it reason being there are um manufacturers in Australia that are only sort of certified to do specific things specific things that are a ph you know over seven under seven under five over five like between three and five like it's it's all sort of you know depends on what their what their credentials are as a manufacturer also a lot of manufacturers don't want to make something new they like clutch is really hard to make um without selling any state secrets it's really hard to make and a lot of them were just spooked by that and they were like i can't can't do it the other one is people don't really like making glue like it's sticky it's like you know and as much as clutch is water soluble like I can't imagine like the cleanup job after that is you know particularly fun to be honest so um really hard to find a good manufacturer I ended up finding one in Sydney and that was the one that I landed on because it was literally was this the one in French's forest literally other way in French's forest and I went well that's a no-brainer at least I can save money on freight you know mum and dad can figure that one out for me so dad then delivers all of the tubes and the boxes up there.

32:07And then there were a few raw materials that I needed to procure myself because they were finding it really hard to get them. So I was like, I'll find then a representative that, you know, a broker that sells me this one specific chemical that you can only get in one place in the world. It's like, you know, just relentless. Anyway. Is this an Alibaba operation? Like how the heck are you finding it? So there's a few ingredients in clutch that are like very niche and like really hard to come by. And there's only one manufacturer in the world that has the license to then like make this product. Damn, that's a monopoly.

32:47And somehow my formulator found, of course, the most niche chemical in the world, but it is like also what makes clutch clutch. And so don't blame him for it. And so when he handed the formula over to me, once he, you know, developed everything and we signed everything off and I paid him out, that was when he was like, yeah, here's where I obtained all these chemicals. By the way, these few you can only get from one person. And I was like, oh, fucking excellent. Just my life. Anyway. And then, sorry, then I had to find like, you know, the representative that would like sell it to me and all these things.

33:23I had to prove that also like I was a legitimate sort of like business that was like actually obtaining these chemicals to then like make my own product like there were a few things that they wanted to check obviously because they didn't want me I don't know ripping off their IP either I was like I promise you I come in peace um and then so anyway all of this stuff comes to this manufacturing French's Forest they make 5 ,000 units fairly certain my unit cost at that point It was like$17 or something crazy. It was crazy. Anyway, at that point, I was like, I just want to get this out. It'd been like four years and I was like, I'm just going to die if I like have to do this anymore, but like don't have anything to show for it.

34:02I was getting really sick of being poor too, to be honest. I was like, how much more money am I going to have to sink into this before? Like, you know, I'd start making some money and then get it to French Flows. They make the products like all this well. It's all filled, packed, amazing. How good is this? then we launched it first of december um there were a few dilemmas in that what year is this uh 2022 first of december 2022 um i get the first i like we unload it all from the car it's in my parents garage i like take a tube out and i was like what and it turns out that my packaging manufacturer that was over in china um printed version one of the box instead of like version six i think like there was so many different like different things and it turns out that it was like totally non-compliant essentially to sell a box that like was missing information that that should have been on there so i went right so anyway i messaged her and i was like well it's like my launch day and like now you know my boxes are you know ruined and all of these things and she was just like and i was like well i'm gonna have to like i sort of told a white line i was like well all 5 000 of them are committed and like how am i gonna you know do this i'm gonna need to make some more boxes locally in um Australia and then have to literally by hand swap out the boxes um and put the new the tubes in the new boxes and whatever he then like proceeded to tell me well just like delay launch and we'll send some over and you know it'll be like another three weeks and I was like literally ropeable at this point I was like absolutely not so then I found someone in Sydney and I was like you're paying this invoice and she was just like ended up you know a lot of toing and froing she ended up paying obviously for her mistake and those that was an expensive mistake on her part but you know it was what it was and then I had this product and I was like wow how amazing is this sold a few I don't know maybe like 10 to my friends and then um and then uh it was about three months later I uploaded um a TikTok that then ended up going viral which was essentially of um me sticking a spaghetti strap to my shoulder and it not falling off went for like 10 seconds went to bed woke up in the morning and had over 9 million views 420 000 likes and i was like oh god and then my phone had broken because my shopify you know broke and then we'd sort of sold about sold out of that those 5 000 units they're getting sold everywhere like they're going they went to 35 different countries that first sort of batch of 5 000 i was like holy moly i was like made it big anyway little did i know like what what was to come was that then i was getting a response from all these people that had finally received their clutch glue waters after spending probably$20 on shipping and waiting like three weeks to receive it and so many of the tubes had exploded because I thought it might have been the air pressure I was like oh is it like is it the air freight like I don't really know it's so frustrating and then I was like holy shit so then I'm like refunding everyone because I'm like oh my god like this is the worst anyway I gotten to return them but it turns out it wasn't the air pressure it was that um the sealing machine got too hot at some point throughout the chain and it had essentially like pierced the end of the tube um and then that's kind of so their liability yeah yes they were like and then they it was just a disaster and then at this point i was like what again i need to make more but i don't want to make more with you so then I had to find a new manufacturer which was then when Ollie came into this conversation I was like do you know anyone and he was like I actually know a great one it's in Perth they're going to be the best so then this supply chain kept going packaging made in China then it goes to Perth then it comes to Sydney and then it kind of goes out from there literally fulfilling them from my bedroom and then it kind of got to the point where I was like I can't keep going on like this like there's so much to so so many moving parts and like if one of these things goes wrong it's you know detrimental to then like the domino effect of what happens after this so then i was like okay i'm going to need to try and find like a turnkey solution i need a manufacturer that's going to be able to kind of do all the packaging all the filling everything that you possibly need um in one place and then it just gets air freighted or sea freighted you know out of wherever it was and the best case scenario for us was that it was actually ended up being out of China.

38:24And so that's what our supply chain looks like now after... It took me a whole year to finally get that off the ground, though. Like, they had to do so much testing. I had to make sure that they were credible. I had to make sure they weren't going to run off with my IP. Like, all of these things that sort of come into it. And only very recently have we now entirely shifted to using this manufacturer now out of China. And it's a full turnkey solution to us. thank god but yeah just know for the first like two years of clutch um it was the jankiest operation ever ever come across and even when it came to like supply and demand planning like i was just kind of like vibing it like i was just kind of like i don't know it feels right to maybe order another 10 000 like that's so i could never do that now like you know we're a bit more of a well-oiled machine now and like we know how much we're going through thank god but like god that was just like chaotic I remember that's just what kept me up at night every single night was just kind of like and where's the shipment like you know I'd be tracking it on my phone at like 3 a.m in the morning like the boats like in the middle of the fucking Indian Ocean and I'm like oh my god like you know what if there's a tsunami and like all of these things there's just too many variables I was just like this just like is this and it would take ages it'd take like six months like from start to finish just like not not right in terms of like you know operating a fully functional business.

39:47So it really wasn't until we started actually doing a cap raise where I finally had the proper solution to my supply chain. So that was good that at least I wasn't pitching and sort of doing this cap raise process before I entirely understood my own supply chain. So there were things that I sort of felt out before I knew that we were like mature enough as a company to kind of have some more serious conversations. Because if you were there to ask me being like, well, where do you get it made? And I'm like, oh, well, you know, China first and then Perth and then Sydney and you'd be like, Oh my God, like your cost, like your cost per unit must be so high, which it definitely was.

40:21But like now it's now, you know, we're at a much steadier point and have a lot better relationships with our manufacturer as well. And before we get into fundraising, when you sold 8 ,000 units, was this still in the janky supply chain? Oh yeah. Janky, janky. It was crazy. I was like calling people like I was calling my manufacturer just like basically on my knees being like help and then and she was like oh i guess so and like she's just the nicest lady and i was like i felt so bad um and then same thing happened with woolies woolies gave us a purchase order and then they were like all right deliver 10 000 in two weeks and i was like what the fuck so i had to like make all this stuff it was crazy we were there at our storage unit which was like a like where we'd keep you know a bunch of clutch and whatever but it was literally like my sister's partner's businesses like warehouse like that he just like out of the kindness of his heart was like you can have a little corner in the warehouse and I was like thank you like poor and needy um and we one Sunday the shipment I remember arrived from the manufacturer she'd somehow pulled a rabbit out of her hat and she got it done for me within a week um good thing was I did actually have some reserved packaging that I just had for a rainy day so like that was just lucky that we were able to do this and then it got delivered on a Friday afternoon and it needed to go to Woolies on the Monday and so on the Saturday and Sunday it was my mum my dad my sister myself and our boyfriends all there doing made a little system line of like packing all the inners and outers and the shippers and packing the whole pallet and getting it all prepared for Woolies got there on the Monday we did our job perfectly um and that was definitely one of the most stressful sort of two weeks of my life, only for them to not put it even out on the shelf really for the entire six weeks that we were meant to be arranged.