00:00:00:00 - 00:00:17:04

The reason I started this business was not because I wanted to start a laundry business, right? It was more or less I want to start an e-commerce business. What has really solid unit economics like? There's a lot of consumable products that you can like, not take, like for example, vitamins and laundry. No matter what you're going to be doing, unless you're buying new clothes all the time.

00:00:17:04 - 00:00:38:22

I look at creative ad programs all day in certain industries. People are so hyper focused on getting their direct response content right. They're LPs. Right? And then you look at the pure set, like the competitive set, every single competitor is talking about the exact same value propositions. You need those foundational assets that are going to be more bottom of funnel and get people to convert in certain instances.

00:00:38:22 - 00:00:47:08

But I think you also need to figure out how to tell your story to differentiate yourself.

00:00:47:10 - 00:01:06:14

Dude, it's great to have you on the podcast. You know, we've been talking to a bunch of different people just about marketing, and I think the landscape is really changing. I'm just curious, like for you right now, just in scaling laundry sauce and thinking about performance marketing, and you guys have mainly been direct to consumer, what are your like major focus areas right now?

00:01:06:14 - 00:01:26:24

Like what's kind of keeping you up at night and the things that are also just driving you forward, like where's your head at? Yeah, I mean, a big part of where we're at right now is just spin on the SKUs expansion and just getting really all the core products we need live to scale. We look at last year, we literally just had a white box and black box of pods.

00:01:26:24 - 00:01:48:09

And then, it wasn't till November that we launched, Egyptian Rose, which is our third fragrance. And then we launched dryer sheets, and that just totally unlocked another level of scale because, you know, the margins are a little bit better with, like, dryer sheets and stuff. And then we were start like this year. We layered on fabric softener, scent booster, dryer balls, candles and fine fragrance, which just came out.

00:01:48:11 - 00:02:07:00

So we have a lot more products to sell people because fundamentally, every business boils down to what does it cost you to buy a customer and how much are they worth over time? You know, whether you're an e-commerce business, ass business, or any type of business like customer acquisition has to be something that you can go buy customers and they need to be worth a lot more than what you pay to buy them.

00:02:07:02 - 00:02:29:07

And when you don't have a lot of things to sell, people like LTV is somewhat limited, right? And even for the the pod business, which in theory like should be a good repurchase business, you know, people require laundry pods pretty consistently. It has subscription potential. Yeah. So I could talk a little bit more about that. Yeah, I the reason I started this business was not because I wanted to start a laundry business.

00:02:29:10 - 00:02:46:19

Right. It was more or less I want to start an e-commerce business. What has like really solid unit economics. Right. What's I just like, quite literally wanted to move a box from point A to point B, didn't necessarily care what was in the box. And I had sold golf balls on eBay when I was in high school or junior high.

00:02:46:20 - 00:03:03:23

I think it was high school. Go around on the golf course, pick up, golf balls and then wash them and then put them in, you know, basically a shoe box and sell them for a dollar each on eBay. Right. And I just kind of loved the consumable nature of golf balls. It was like the simplicity of the product.

00:03:04:00 - 00:03:25:08

I loved. And then, yeah, I was just like, I'd get a dollar for each ball. So I was like, picking up dollar bills. And, that kind of guided my thinking and my framework for what I wanted an e-commerce business, something that was consumable and, you know, laundry. Something you can't opt out of. Like there's a lot of consumable products that you can, like, not take, like, for example, vitamins.

00:03:25:10 - 00:03:43:15

Right. And laundry, no matter what you're going to be doing, unless you're buying new clothes all the time. Yeah. I think that kind of like separates. I was talking to David Wolfe about this, too, a couple weeks ago. That separates really quality e-com businesses today because you just have repeat purchase baked into the product like you like it.

00:03:43:15 - 00:04:06:06

It builds on the service. In theory, you'll purchase it again. I was also having this conversation with, Arjun Singh from Joly. He was saying that like to layer to go, you know, a layer even deeper. It's better when there's some sort of vanity involved in that purchase, like you're buying something to make you better looking or to kind of feel some sort of insecurity.

00:04:06:06 - 00:04:24:10

I mean, do you think you're do you think the laundry pods do that in some sort of way? Yeah. I mean, I think fundamentally I'm in the business of emotion. Right. And in highly commoditized industries like that brand is really the only differentiator. And it's how it makes you feel like I think about Doctor Squatch, like, why do people pay the premium for that bar of soap?

00:04:24:11 - 00:04:36:19

It's because of the way Doctor Squatch makes them feel in the shower. Right? I want to make you feel a certain way when you're doing your laundry. And we're trying to take it from a chore to, you know, a luxury experience in a way. And then also, like, we want to pump up your tires and make you feel good.

00:04:36:23 - 00:04:59:17

Yeah. I mean, that's why we say smell good, look good. Feel good. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean I think a lot of people miss that. I mean it's there's a lot of conjecture also. It's just hard to measure like how are you building brand mode in such a short period of time. That's like a very difficult thing for startups to do just because they don't have the capital of like a Coca-Cola that can spend endlessly on brand marketing and make you feel a certain way through their advertising.

00:04:59:22 - 00:05:22:06

So this is something we were just talking about. But I want you to kind of opinion is, you know, when when did you start the company? How long has it been? So we our first sales were October 20th, 2021. Okay. So it's been two years basically. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So 24 months basically. And you talk to people, I'm sure, across America who, like, know who you are.

00:05:22:07 - 00:05:39:17

Yeah, totally. My brother. Wore his laundry source out here washing into a bar the other day, and, one of the chicks actually knew about it. Saw Scott Eastwood out, and he's like, oh, the stuff. She's like, that stuff is incredible. Yeah, for sure. That's a that's that's insane. But most of your spend has gone through performance marketing.

00:05:39:17 - 00:06:02:07

Yeah. It's mainly been direct response like the UGC mash ups. I mean those are really what pay the bills for sure. I mean, we started early on with some like higher top funnel, like brand assets and like it it's not like it didn't perform, but like the UGC ads, like those are what really paints the picture of like what your ad program looks like and how it evolved, you know, over the last 24 months.

00:06:02:09 - 00:06:32:10

Yeah. I mean, I think everyone just starts off with your typical, you know, start on Facebook and then use Google for like retargeting and branded search, which is eventually, you know, going to help capture the demand that you're generating top of funnel with Facebook and Facebook really is the ultimate discovery platform in my opinion. And, you know, it's kind of a it's a really magic thing when you can make more money than you're spending on Facebook, you know, you basically have like an ATM machine and, you know, it's like, at what point do you like, tap out?

00:06:32:10 - 00:06:48:03

And that's when you got to figure out, like all the other things that actually make it continue scaling. But, yeah, we just started off with our Facebook ads and then, you know, got it to a couple hundred grand a month in revenue actually relatively quickly. What are those first ads look like? It's hard. It's hard to remember off the top of my head.

00:06:48:03 - 00:07:11:08

But we did have this one like top of funnel asset that raindrop did. And that really helped codify the brand story and made it easy to raise capital for the business. It basically said like what we're about and it kind of created like a fun brand, and so forth. So I think even even though it was like super expensive and like, I wouldn't generally recommend spending like 100 grand on a video before you launch.

00:07:11:10 - 00:07:30:22

For most companies, I think there's so much value that actually came out of that that was like indirect because like, we basically understood what our voice was. I mean, it's evolved over time, but at least when we launched, we knew what our brand voice was, kind of what we stood for. You know, we clearly had humor integrated into the brand, and we wanted to have fun with it.

00:07:30:24 - 00:07:48:07

And then kind of all the other ads dovetailed off that brand persona that we developed, you know, going through that process. Because when you when you do like a six figure budget video, it's not let's just see what happens. Right? There's a lot of planning that goes in ahead of time, okay. You need to be intentional about it, especially when you're spending that sort of capital.

00:07:48:07 - 00:08:04:03

It's equivalent to a month of revenue. It sounded like yeah. But I mean, that's how people know you guys today. So I think to your point, it codified a lot of what the brand is known for today and why, you know, some checking the bar is like, yeah, yeah, that, that, that brand slaps. Yeah. I mean you got to be memorable, right?

00:08:04:03 - 00:08:23:10

And what was interesting, we were over the City Consumer Disruptors conference today and they had Dasani, canned water. Right. First thing I said it, when we pulled it out, I was like, oh, this isn't liquid death. You know, it's the same product fundamentally, but you feel way cooler. Drink and liquid does. Yeah. No. And I mean, and it's memorable to your point though.

00:08:23:16 - 00:08:50:23

So consumer is interesting because, you know, to some degree there's it's really tough to have any sort of competitive edge from from like a product perspective, almost everything's commoditized. Yeah. You can commoditize anything, you know, even if there's, you know, patent pending patented items, like for the most part, you can get pretty close. Like, so I'm just curious, when you guys launched, was it a novel?

00:08:51:00 - 00:09:12:01

Was it a novel? Products like to talk to me about how you thought through that positioning. Yeah. When we I first came up with the name for Laundry sauce, and then I knew we wanted to obviously do laundry detergent, but we had no idea how we were going to differentiate it. And we just basically figured like, okay, what's the like and what are the ways in which we could differentiate?

00:09:12:01 - 00:09:26:17

I figured it was going to be hard to go out to the market and say, oh, this cleans better than Tide Plus. Like, how am I going to come up with all the R&D to actually come up with a formula that performs better than tide? And we realized, you know, there really weren't a lot of people doing fine fragrance and laundry.

00:09:26:17 - 00:09:45:20

So there was kind of like this giant open white space that went totally, like, overlooked by the entire market. So, you know, there's been so many times where people have said, why didn't I think about this? It's like, or this was just like totally standing in plain sight. And, so I think there was like really a, white space.

00:09:45:20 - 00:10:05:04

Yeah, you had white space, and then you're like, all right, we need a you kind of need to be like a first mover in terms of building a brand around. Yeah, that sort of commodity or that niche that you're actually trying to become known for. And that's where I think creative plays such an important part of the mix when you're going direct to consumer.

00:10:05:04 - 00:10:24:24

Yeah, I mean, creative is really the one opportunity you have to tell your story. Yeah, right. I mean, you're basically fundamentally interrupting people's day to say, buy my shit, right? And you got to come across in a way that's not like two salesy. It turns people off. Right? You got to entertain people. Well, I mean, like, just taking the commoditization angle.

00:10:24:24 - 00:10:46:19

You'd be surprised. Like, I look at creative ad programs all day in certain industries, like, people are so hyper focused on getting their direct response content right. They're LPs. Right. And then you look at the peer set, the peer set like the competitive set. Yeah. Every single competitor is talking about the exact same value propositions. They have the exact same UGC.

00:10:46:19 - 00:11:10:10

They're testing the same hooks, like they're commoditized in their themselves through their messaging. Yeah. Which is why I think it's very important you need those foundational assets that are going to be more bottom of funnel and get people to convert in certain instances. But I think you also need to figure out how to tell your story, to differentiate yourself, to basically like, you know, have your punch line.

00:11:10:11 - 00:11:25:11

Yeah. Well, you know, in a short voice, I think that's really what it boils down to, right? Because someone else can come out with a, you know, nice smelling laundry detergent. Well, I'm sure they have, right? Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I mean, like, we're not the only people that have ever put, like, nice fragrances in laundry, right?

00:11:25:11 - 00:11:41:07

No, but I mean, since you guys launched, like, it's been two years, I'm sure people have come out and tried to replicate. Yeah. Hotel collection. They tried knocking us off so they just recently just like they copied all the packaging like absolutely no, no originality there. So I think we did a pretty good job actually with the packaging.

00:11:41:07 - 00:11:59:19

And like most people had never put it in like a magnetic luxury designer box. Right. So like those are some of the things that we, that we really did and you know, try to create it, you know, in a luxury experience because, I mean, the laundries, they partnered with Labo and they did some really high end, you know, fragrances and that, but, you know, still came in like a plastic jar.

00:11:59:19 - 00:12:17:11

It's also just like a totally different demo. Yeah. Who I was just talking to Karina from Dead Cool. She loves, like, the laundry detergent space, but totally different customer than. Yeah, laundry sauce. Yeah. That's true. I mean, because you're going to have your voice that speaks to different people, right? Like, what do you stand for as a company?

00:12:17:13 - 00:12:37:12

And I think, a lot of people are buying, like why you do it, not what you do. Right? Especially if you have to buy the product anyway. Well, I think if you look at positioning, and then, you know, target demo like particularly for this market laundry, it's like if you're like a guy that like wants to smell good, like your optionality is just like it's cleaning products.

00:12:37:12 - 00:13:05:14

Really? Yeah. You know, like, you don't really have any ability to, you know, have any sort of individual individuality if you're choosing between like tide and I don't even know the other one. So like, I don't know, it's like, yeah. Like we stand against mediocrity, like boring, like average life experiences. Like we stand against that. Like we want to be the antithesis of mediocrity and take something that is generally a pretty boring aspect of your life and make it a little bit more exciting.

00:13:05:16 - 00:13:25:19

So you start to scale. Just going back here, you start to scale off the hero product. The pods. Yeah. And did people repurchase at the rate that you were expecting? Were you like, oh shit, we have a winner here. We need to we should just go deep on this product or we need to expand as you know, out and go a little bit more horizontal.

00:13:25:19 - 00:13:41:15

How did you guys think through that? And how did you know what the right timing was? Yeah. I mean, this is, you know, my first e-commerce business. So I didn't have, like a ton of data to say, oh, this is what the repeat order rate should be. I mean, obviously, no matter what it is, I probably want it to be higher and more profitable.

00:13:41:20 - 00:14:08:23

But, you know, the repeat purchase rate was good enough to, to keep going. And then I think as we've, added more products, as we've, improved, like the website experience is, we've just improved the whole brand experience as a whole. I think, we've been able to deliver just a higher quality product to people, especially when you have when you can use like the pod scent booster, fabric softener and dryer sheets, like it's a like a legit, you know, laundry experience rather than just the pods.

00:14:08:23 - 00:14:31:22

Right. Because people like, loved it. And then they didn't want to use different, fabric softener, different dryer sheets because they felt like, you know, the sounds would clash or whatever. So, I think over time, like, just whole experience has gotten better. What is the process been like creating scents? It's quite fun. So I am, I guess, the principal perfumer of us now.

00:14:32:01 - 00:14:50:23

So I became the de facto nose. That's too funny. So you just find things that inspire you, sense that you like, and then, you know, working with our fragrance, manufacturer, like, they have a ton of technical capability, and they've designed fragrances for some of the, you know, biggest designer brands in the world that we all know and are familiar with.

00:14:51:00 - 00:15:09:08

So, yeah, the Siberian pine like that was based off of, like a niche Cologne that I was using. And I just sent it to them, like, let's make something kind of use this as inspiration. And then, you know, ultimately we kind of landed on some signature scents and generally like, laundry sauce has, like, woody fragrances, is kind of like a base note.

00:15:09:10 - 00:15:23:00

They tend to perform quite well in laundry, because that's another thing that you got to think about is how is this going to perform in the wash? Like what you can do in a traditional fine fragrance might you might not be able to do in a laundry. It doesn't come out. Yeah, yeah. Results aren't the same. Yeah.

00:15:23:02 - 00:15:50:10

That's actually that's interesting. Just your journey to chief perfumer. E-com. And then in terms of, like, you know, thinking through direct to consumer and how you guys like, play on shelves, I think you've proven out that people want to buy a specialty fragrance, laundry detergent online. But, how do you guys think about retail? So retail from everyone that I've talked with, you need a lot more employees and takes a lot of capital.

00:15:50:15 - 00:16:09:16

You know, you're just increasing the overhead. And, you know, right now we're scaling so fast on DDC, is it almost be a distraction for us at this point? So I mean, eventually you need to go omnichannel, I think especially a product like laundry. And you know, you look at the biggest brands like, I mean, Docker squatch is a great example.

00:16:09:16 - 00:16:32:05

I mean, they built a massive DTC business, and then they just went absolutely crushed it. You know, and Target and Walmart and, you know, all the mass retail, manscaped is another, you know, one, you know, built a massive DTC brand and then you go retail. So I think if you can build a brand, because another thing I'm thinking about is in order to have a brand, you got to spend a certain amount on media, right?

00:16:32:05 - 00:16:56:12

So for sure, we spent, you know, many millions of dollars so far. But what happens when I spend $100 million just on ads? Just ads alone, just programmatic media spend? You know what our level of brand awareness will be and, like, what people think about us. I think that'll be a pretty big milestone that we ultimately hit in which, you know, well, I think, I mean, how are you guys thinking about that and quantifying it?

00:16:56:14 - 00:17:24:12

In terms of what you've already spent and the type of brand awareness that you're kind of receiving? Almost anecdotally, yeah. I mean, it's really been anecdotes. I mean, we've reached tens of millions of people, you know, just through our ads, you know, over the years. But I've met so many people, like, I was, I was in Vegas, the bellboy, like, knew, like, laundry sauces because I had a laundry shirt on, and I gave them a free sample.

00:17:24:14 - 00:17:51:03

I mean, I've met people skydiving, and they, like, knew my ads. I mean, just literally everywhere I was in. It's actually in Vienna. We're in a laundry saw shirt. I'm in the lobby and lady comes down. She's like, oh, I use laundry sauce at home, but yeah. Or, my co-founder, he had a birthday party and his mom was flying home sitting at the bar, and, that person happened to be, laundry sauce customer that she was sitting next to because she asked, like, oh, what are you doing out here?

00:17:51:03 - 00:18:08:01

And so I go, yeah, my son started this company called Laundry Sauce. I was out for his birthday. Blah, blah, blah. And yeah, she was a customer. Here's another weird one. So, we had Chris Harrison, you know, host of The Bachelor. He he's an investor. But before he invested, yes, his neighbor about it and his neighbor was like, oh, you have.

00:18:08:01 - 00:18:36:19

And you used laundry sauce for like six months. Absolutely love it. Just like you just asked because he was considering investing and. Yeah, exactly. And it's just like that, you know, friends with his neighbor as his neighbor. And so you guys have good market penetration basically. Yeah. I mean, it's it's working for sure. And then in terms of like introducing new products and getting those out there, you find that people just like kind of stick with a scent and they're going for the dryer sheets and the pods and yeah, I mean typically you like a scent and then you're going to buy like all the products.

00:18:36:21 - 00:18:57:06

It'll be interesting. So we have these scent discovery kits. They're going to be coming out in about two weeks where basically you can try a laundry sauce essentially risk free. You know, we'll either give it away for free or, you know, pay 25 bucks to get $25 off your next order. And I'm curious to see, like, once you've bought the scent discovery kit, like, what do you buy?

00:18:57:06 - 00:19:16:15

Because I think a lot of people, they're just buying, like, a sense that they, they're most familiar with. Or is that the color of the box? Right. Like, Australian sandalwood is our most popular fragrance. And I'm wondering, is it just because is it a black box and it looks cool, or you just like some sandalwood people are kind of buying blind on the first try.

00:19:16:15 - 00:19:38:02

Yeah, exactly. What about mixed kits? Yeah, we've had a lot of requests for a variety pack. I think we'll do it eventually. So yeah, that's been, I mean, for over other clients, vibes like mixed packs, mixed box, always highest performing first touch, hero scale. Yeah. And then you discover your flavor and you're just kind of hooked since really particular, though.

00:19:38:02 - 00:19:56:21

It's so nuanced because I think it's it drives like attraction. It drives mood. Like there's a lot in there I think you can mark it with. Yeah, I was at a conference and I had a bunch of laundry sauce out on display and we had, the scent beads, our scent booster. And it's, you know, cool to just like profile people.

00:19:56:21 - 00:20:14:21

And like I said, I'm like, oh, which one do you like the most? And you'll have someone like, oh, I really don't like that one. But that'll be someone's most favorite scent, you know? So it's, it's highly individual. That's why we call it, you know, your signature scent. So in terms of you sort of this business, you, are a serial entrepreneur.

00:20:14:21 - 00:20:32:09

You've had businesses in the past. First e-comm business. When you guys started the company, were you really intentional about, like, how you wanted to crystallize value, like through an exit or, you know, where were you kind of just like, we need to start this business and see what happens. No, I mean, I'm pretty familiar with the whole, like, venture space and selling companies.

00:20:32:09 - 00:20:55:14

And, I mean, this is a company. We'll build the exit. You know, it's not going to be just a lifestyle brand. So we certainly like had a especially when you take on investor money. Like there's no like oh we're just going to, you know, fuck around here. Yeah. Like we're here to deliver, you know, returns for our shareholders, and just grow a really big business and have a real nice exit, and everyone just rides off into the sunset and has a good time.

00:20:55:18 - 00:21:15:12

That's. That's the dream right there. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah. So what does that timeline look for you? So you guys are two years into this. When did you start raising venture money? We started raising, like, real capital beginning of last year. So, you know, if we have an overall time horizon of five years, I think that'd be pretty fast.

00:21:15:14 - 00:21:34:07

But I think it's doable. I mean, you look at manscaped, they went from 0 to 300 million in three years or. No, they went from 3 million to 300 million in three years. I don't know how long it to take them to get to the first 3 million. But they had that in their SEC filing when they were going to Spac, they were out of they were out of some, venture studio.

00:21:34:07 - 00:21:47:22

Right. Or I don't know if they're out of venture Studio. I know they I think they were on Shark Tank and did quite well. And I've met with some of. Oh, you know what I think is that the manscaped competitor, I can't remember what those guys are called. Yeah, I think, but there is for their first market.

00:21:47:22 - 00:22:03:02

They own the space. Yeah, for sure. And they had great name and great branding. Yeah, you kind of. I think the name goes a long way. I think it's underrated, actually, for sure. And their products, they have like the lawn mower. It's just it's funny you know. Yeah I mean I was thinking like, what if Doctor Squatch was named something different?

00:22:03:02 - 00:22:22:19

It was like Bob's or something like, would it would have taken off like, seriously, did you guys come up with the name, so there was a meme that went viral, back in 2016, I think. And it was basically like, you know, who the fuck calls laundry detergent? Or who the fuck calls laundry sauce? Laundry detergent.

00:22:22:19 - 00:22:47:04

Okay, Mr. Scientist, but like, it was something like that, and my brother and I had just always called, laundry sauce or laundry detergent. Laundry sauce and just stuck and, Yeah, take a bunch of edibles one night, you're like, this is. This has got to be a thing. Yeah. No. Yeah. Actually, my brother and I were flying to our lake house, and the idea just hit, and I'm like, oh, dude, this thing would be unbelievable.

00:22:47:04 - 00:23:09:23

And I basically thought to myself, oh, I can turn this into a $10 million business, like, no problem. And, you know, sure enough, we did. Yeah for sure. And now it's like, okay, let's get to 100 million. Yeah. Crystallize some more value here. Are you concerned just, with what's happening with some of the public DTC businesses, like, how do you kind of rationalize and think about some of the, the casualties that are happening in the field right now?

00:23:10:00 - 00:23:29:11

Yeah, I think a lot of them, you know, like, look at, like Casper, that's one of those, kind of. Yeah, just kind of got destroyed. Yeah, but Casper, I was talking to David about this, like they just thrived off of, you know, endless, you know, an endless ability to just kind of reach new customers through Facebook.

00:23:29:11 - 00:23:47:10

There's absolutely no repurchase mechanisms built in that business. Yeah, exactly. And even like, I know Warby Parker was another one that got hit quite hard. I mean, how often are you buying glasses? Yeah. So I think the, the businesses that haven't done well are ones that, don't have any like, like consumable nature to it or repeat.

00:23:47:14 - 00:24:02:17

So you need to be using like daily at least weekly. Yeah. And then if you get like really out of whack in terms of your expenses, I mean, one of the I think the magic things about e-commerce is how big you can scale a business with so few people. Yeah, yeah. It's true. I mean, we were talking about that.

00:24:02:20 - 00:24:24:02

You basically built your biz eight figure business with, what, 2 or 3 people? Yeah, it's just myself, my brother, my co-founder. How do you think about, you know, some people have a lot of trouble, like maintaining the integrity of the brand and the communications. Like, I know you guys have really just built a lot of the infrastructure off the back of agencies.

00:24:24:03 - 00:24:43:03

Yeah. Speak a little bit more about that. Yeah. So it's not like we haven't used people to grow this business. We just use agencies. And what I like about agencies is you buy outcomes rather than buying labor. Because when you hire an employee, you got to buy labor. And then, you know, teach them to do something generally. Yeah, you're a little bit more forgiving, I think, with internal talent.

00:24:43:09 - 00:25:01:14

Yeah, yeah. And the thing is, with agencies like you always have, like, like another agency wanted to eat your lunch, you know, so you don't deliver. Yeah. It's true. There's someone else like that wants my business, you know? Yeah. It's true. Like, imagine, imagine employee trying to justify their worth and value at the end of each month of the presentation.

00:25:01:14 - 00:25:10:22

Like it doesn't happen. Agencies. It's like common practice. Bread and butter. Yeah. It's like I'll give you a deck any day of the week. Yeah.

00:25:10:24 - 00:25:30:17

And then I think one of the reasons why we're able to use agencies was because the simplicity of the product. Right. Like everyone's been doing laundry their whole life. Yeah. And yeah, I think it's just the simplicity of product and then like, simplicity of, like, all the metrics in e-commerce, everyone knows whether or not they're doing a good job or bad job, basically in real time.

00:25:30:21 - 00:25:48:10

Yeah. Well, it's become the ecosystem is so, it's so robust now, the amount of like tools and technology that have come out of, you know, just the sharing of data is actually insane. So you can pretty much benchmark anything. Now, we invested in a company. Vero. I don't know if you guys have used them. We use them.

00:25:48:10 - 00:26:12:06

Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's awesome. Like yard and building basically benchmark all of your CPM. CPK so interesting. When you look at that software though, the entire market moves together. Yeah. And for the longest time people just forgot about seasonality. But I think as a brand you just want to this is a really good barometer for like how your brand performs is seeing if you're in the top percentile of each of those metrics.

00:26:12:06 - 00:26:33:08

So even if you're, you know, experiencing a bit of decline, you're still outperforming your peers that yeah, if good unit economics, like business can scale. Yeah. You can reach a lot of different people. Yeah. I think the biggest thing you can control as a business is lifetime value. I think. I mean, obviously you can improve cash by having, you know, better ads, better landing pages.

00:26:33:08 - 00:26:55:15

But I think in a lot of ways it is market driven. Lifetime value is really on you like, it's product driven. You know, you need to have a good product for sure. Yeah. I mean, everything kind of falls apart if you don't have a good product. So you start there and then you need really good marketing, especially obviously if you're an e-commerce business, to get the product into people's hands.

00:26:55:17 - 00:27:17:10

And then two degree to reconvert them. But I'm generally in your camp that like the product gets people to rebuy and it should get people to talk about the product. Yeah. Oh shit. I just bought these laundry pods. They smell really good. Yeah. I mean, the amount of stories I have of just like super where they tell all their friends about it or I mean, yeah, I have people, like, come up to me all the time that are, you know, within my network.

00:27:17:10 - 00:27:37:07

That's like I've told all my friends about it, they love it, and then they're telling all their friends about it. And yeah, I guess why do they want to tell people about it? It's because we've made it fun. You made it fun. The product's cool. The marketing is great. Yeah, like it gets the conversation going. I think generally like, you know, within your different ventures.

00:27:37:09 - 00:27:56:18

How would you. Where does laundry sauce fall? Like you having you having a good time. Yeah. It's so much fun. Yeah. And you know, initially like I thought there's a lot of like great lifestyle components of it as well. Yeah. Like smelling good or. Well. Yeah. Well, I mean, is that, you know, I'll see, you know, you shoot videos of a bunch of hot models.

00:27:56:18 - 00:28:14:03

Yeah, yeah. How is the, tell us about the, Eastwood advertisement. How was that? Yeah, that was super well received. I think it has almost like a million views on his organic, like, just Instagram. And then we were actually talking with him earlier today, and he basically said that he's like, you have no idea how many people have come up to.

00:28:14:03 - 00:28:29:14

He's like, dude, this ad put me on the map. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But I mean, it's good for us. I think it's good for him. I'm not gonna lie. I did not know who Scott Eastwood was before that had that reason. Some big movies like Fast Furious, yeah, he's got five. I didn't reach this part of New York.

00:28:29:14 - 00:28:47:19

Fast and furious. I have a half million followers. I had no kidding. I'm kidding. But I do think like that ad like, that's kind of crazy. Like he was in an advertisement for your brand and like it kind of like he had drive value from it, you know? It's clear. Yeah, true. You know, the comments are just absolutely off the chain on that too.

00:28:47:19 - 00:29:06:16

So now the, the the one where yeah. No, there's a, there's a certain edit of that video that's so funny. It's like he said he found it on the internet. Yeah, yeah. My boyfriend said he saw it on the internet. So. Good. So what's what's, what's next? How do you want to take the the brand. Like how does it evolve?

00:29:06:16 - 00:29:27:16

I always think of brands as like humans. They kind of grow up and, you know, they start dressing different. They, you know, start doing different things, hanging out with different people. I mean, 100%. And then you also just see like with data and over time, like, you know, now with as many customers as we have, like you just have this real time feedback mechanism, like customers will tell you what products they want you to make.

00:29:27:16 - 00:29:43:15

Yeah, they'll tell you like what they like with what they're resonating with. But yeah, I think if we look at our first website to where we're at now to, you know, the website that you guys are working on for us, I mean, it's just this huge evolution. You know, it's like looking back at those embarrassing high school photos.

00:29:43:15 - 00:29:58:24

You're like, oh, I can't believe I used to wear stuff like that. You know? It looks so weird or whatever. Yeah. When we first launch our site, it looks freaking janky. It's how it goes. You know, you launch shot a template or, like, you know, a five case site, and. Yeah, you make it work. Yeah, exactly.

00:29:59:01 - 00:30:18:02

So I think kind of where we're going as a brand is just more, you know, luxury messaging. You know, we don't want to be pretentious, though. Like, we want to be have, like, we want to have fun. I mean, there was a fragrance company there today at this conference I was at, and, you know, it comes across as very, like, elitist, right?

00:30:18:06 - 00:30:31:19

Lingerie solstice. No no no no no. Like this other fragrance company that was like presenting, it's like some French rounders. Yeah. I mean, think of, like an Hermes or. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Like, we'll give you the right to buy our shit, you know, kind of like. Yeah, exactly. And there's a customer for that. Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, that's not us.

00:30:31:19 - 00:30:47:05

Like, we want to be kind of like. And honestly, that's not like that's not a mass market economy there. No it's not I mean you have to be approachable. So we want to be like an everyday, affordable luxury. Like it's not going to break your bank to, you know, buy a laundry. It's something fun you spend on and you know, you feel good about it.

00:30:47:05 - 00:31:11:15

Yeah, totally. So how does that manifest itself in terms of I want to focus specifically on creative, because I think you guys have really nailed it, and it's been a key part of your growth. Yeah. Like do you keep needing to just like hit home runs with your ads? Like, how are you thinking about it? Well, I think with the, the brand voice that we've created, it's like it was all engineered from, like day one, right?

00:31:11:15 - 00:31:35:14

When you create the voice, the voice allows you to do certain things, like, for example, liquid death, like one of their, like, original ads, and they're waterboarding someone, you know, like, that's so extreme, but it works for them because they've basically said that's okay in their brand voice. You know, Dasani can't go and do that if it sounds like we have filtered water, it's okay.

00:31:35:16 - 00:31:55:17

Yeah. I think, we created a brand voice and we also have a very fun name. Yeah. And like, there's puns that just write themself, you know, you know, laundry sauce, like, for the biggest loads, right? Like, you know, it's just it's easy. Yeah. It's just easy to come up with stuff. How do you think about your, your creative content calendar in terms of planning?

00:31:55:17 - 00:32:14:12

Like do you kind of limit yourself, from a production perspective because you can spend major on the ads and. Yeah, you know. Yeah. And then also when you start to just do enough of these big, high budget, top of funnel campaigns, I mean, they're very modular in a lot of ways. So you can pull like a scene from this video, pull a scene from this video and create like all new content.

00:32:14:17 - 00:32:32:13

And yeah, I think right now we're looking to do like two really like major, like high end assets each year. And then, you know, you also take well then you have all the UGC stuff and then kind of just your standard performance creator that might be a little bit more product oriented. And you kind of mash all those up.

00:32:32:15 - 00:32:49:15

And you just have kind of constant creative refreshes with just, you know, the content that you've accumulated over time. So it almost gets easier in some ways. Yeah. You just basically build out a really big library. Well, for E-Comm, it certainly gets easier because you just, you know, it works, you have a feedback loop and you build out the library.

00:32:49:17 - 00:33:13:11

Yeah. But we're you know, we're excited always brainstorming new, you know, top of funnel campaign. Like the one that we did is, we called the PSA campaign the public service announcement. Unfortunately, it's really fucking good. Yeah. And that was just straight up out of a customer comment. Like that was legit 100%. Like we just started running as a Facebook ad performed really well and like, okay, what if we turn this into a whole, like, you know, legit video campaign and that's, you know, how we came up with it?

00:33:13:13 - 00:33:37:18

Wow. So you guys I feel like that's like half the fun of this business. Yeah. Right. So how do you guys divide the pie in terms of, like, responsibilities? It's you, your brother and your co-founder. Yeah. So you know, as CEO, like, I'm ultimately the one responsible for capital. You know, vision of the business. Like, you know, with iOS, for example, you have like the visionary and the integrator, like, I'm very much the visionary.

00:33:37:19 - 00:34:02:20

My business partner, Rob, he's the, he's the integrator and he's just super disciplined, super Type-A, like, unbelievably organized. So he's just like a phenomenal counterpart. And I think you just need that in any like, founding team is just like, yeah, you need you need complementary pieces even. I think it's kind of interesting. I have you founded a business before as like a solo founder, never as a solo founder.

00:34:03:00 - 00:34:20:06

Just because it sucks. Yeah, yeah, not for me. I hear you on that. I, I think of my own business and I'm like, what would I do without, you know, someone else to like, you know, man the ship. I mean, you'll always just be limited as a solo founder. Like, you can only go so big. Yeah. And there's only so much that people who work for you will.

00:34:20:07 - 00:34:40:16

Will do, you know, truth. Yeah. So I, I'm, I'm all about just building, like, amazing teams. Like, that's how you're gonna build a big business. Like you're never you can never get that big. I mean, I'm sure there's been some dude that's done super well, but it's like an absolute edge case, right? The commonality amongst great companies is you have great founding teams.

00:34:40:21 - 00:35:04:16

Yeah, yeah. And then they know how to, you know, engineer the business for whatever sort of outcome that they want. Yeah. Are you guys going to expand to retail prior to to selling the business? I've heard both both recommendations. You do it because like you have some people that will say, we're not going to invest in the business or buy the business unless we have, like basically the retail proof points.

00:35:04:16 - 00:35:22:00

And then, you know, you also have the ability to sell. It is kind of the dream, right? It's like, oh, you buy this business. And then you could go, yeah. You know, strategic. Just because if you're buying a business fundamentally you have to see upside in it. It also why are you buying it. Right. So you got to have some lever to, you know, pull on growth.

00:35:22:02 - 00:35:38:03

So if you have someone that's like an expert at taking DTC brands into retail makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. You're like you can unlock value overnight. We won't have to build it. Yeah. So I think you could argue both ways. You know time will tell. Just ultimately like who you run into, who you meet. And I mean, that's just how the world works.

00:35:38:03 - 00:35:59:23

It's all about who, you know. How do you think about scale on e-com? Like, you guys are obviously scaling. You've been growing. How do you push yourselves to either, you know, go faster or slow down? Like, how do you think about growth in that way? It's got to have expensive taste, you know, that's if you want to drive bigger is you want to have private jets, you know, you got to have big numbers.

00:35:59:23 - 00:36:15:13

So, you know, some people are okay with like a $10 million, your business, you know, some people think like, oh, those are rookie numbers. Like, I want $100 million your business. And then some people will think that was a rookie numbers. And then they're like, oh, I'm doing billion dollar businesses. So it's really like who you surround yourself with.

00:36:15:13 - 00:36:35:22

And if you're around people that you know, have $100 million plus businesses or $100 million plus net worth, like it just becomes more normal. And you just you kind of set that thermometer for yourself of like, you know what I expect in terms of success. So, you know, like when we did our first million dollars month, I was like, okay, cool, like huge milestone.

00:36:35:22 - 00:36:52:24

But at the other hand, like, when are we going to get to ten? Yeah, it's like not being content, just continuing to push forward. My question is more geared towards pushing faster on the actual channels. Well, in order to push faster on the channels, like you just had to get past that, like kind of inevitable like growth decay that you.

00:36:52:24 - 00:37:14:04

Yeah. Right. Because degrading returns. Yeah. Because it spent is one thing. To spend $1,000 a day is a different thing to spend $100,000 a day and you just need a lot of things working for you. You know, you need the landing pages to be solid. You need the offer to be solid. Price points, margins, all your email marketing, like, there's a lot of things that have to go right in order to hit like massive scale.

00:37:14:04 - 00:37:35:00

But like, once you do, you know, the magic is it's a machine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, I'm just kind of curious. You talked about building out teams. You're working with your brother right now. How's that working with family? Yeah. I mean, I've worked with them for a long time. He's always worked for me, and, I mean, I feel like he's always worked for me.

00:37:35:00 - 00:37:57:16

Even, like, when we're, like, five years old. I was always bossing them around, like, do my laundry. You didn't realize how literal that was, you know? So I think he he knows, like, what my area of expertise is and like, you know, I just get to do my thing. So he handles our, like, influencer relationships whenever we have, like, inbounds, like, oh, you have a, you know, NFL athlete or celebrity that wants to work with us.

00:37:57:16 - 00:38:23:21

I just forward it to him. He's manning our affiliate like ambassador program as well. Also customer support, customer success. That is all under his purview. And then, you know, we all like his. There's really only a handful of us, like, we all chime in on product development and, you know, bounce ideas off each other. You know, I handle really like the performance marketing aspect of the business, the web development kind of technical infrastructure.

00:38:23:23 - 00:38:43:24

You know, general SEO responsibilities. My business partner, Rob, he is really involved in, like, the logistics area, the business, like, so he's the one working with the three people, working with all of our manufacturers and with your manufacturers. Do you guys just kind of have you've like scale there where the product is just you can fulfill quickly to orders?

00:38:44:01 - 00:39:06:18

Yeah. And what's interesting about this market is, you know, it's basically built for scale, right. You can't really go and say, oh, I just wanted to do it like a small, limited run of pods, like you're buying line time on massive manufacturing equipment. So, on one hand, it sucks because it's hard to get started, but on the other hand, it's great because it can scale, like, infinitely.

00:39:06:20 - 00:39:30:19

Yeah. You can just produce very quickly. Give us the download on on the agencies that you guys worked with since that you said you build good teams. Yeah. Yeah. I want to hear kind of your experience there. Yeah. I guess I'll just give some free shout outs for the agency stuff. So raindrop, they're our main creative agency, and they're the ones, you know, responsible for helping to scale Doctor Squatch.

00:39:30:21 - 00:39:50:08

At least to 300 million in revenue. That's what they have in their ads. But, it's a bit more. Yeah. So that was a major unlock, you know, working with them just because I think the fundamental idea of the business was solid, like going out to this whole market, category. And then raindrop brought the brand to life.

00:39:50:08 - 00:40:11:00

So, I mean, they're all like, level ten brand builders. I mean, they're truly best in class, in my opinion. So they really set a great foundation. And then you got to bring in obviously all the performance marketing agencies, one of the main performance marketing agencies we worked with since the beginning is that company called attention. Like they handle a lot of the media buying, and they've handled email marketing for us in the past.

00:40:11:02 - 00:40:28:11

But it's been great because they were able to manage multiple channels and kind of be like a one stop shop. And that was like very useful early on. Then obviously working with you guys has been a major unlock for us. I mean, what you guys have done for us in terms of, like the new website that we have coming out is like phenomenal.

00:40:28:17 - 00:40:49:24

I've always, kind of wondered in the back of my mind, like, how do we really take this to the next level and just, like, find that agency that can do that? And you guys have, like, absolutely knocked it out of the park, in that perspective. And then, you know, moving things over to you guys like Amazon, you know, it's nice to just have, a few agencies that you work with that have like, tremendous depth and expertise.

00:40:49:24 - 00:41:10:15

And, you know, you can just kind of like, you know, go deeper into their bench and, you know, as your business expands, like figure out how they fit into your, your team structure a little bit better. Yeah. And you know, fundamentally it's on you guys to handle the talent or right. Do. Well. That's what people don't understand on the agency side is like I think about my business as just human resourcing.

00:41:10:15 - 00:41:28:03

And it is hard for people to actually understand that because they just like think about services and results and scopes and yes, that's what you're selling. But like at the end of the day, it's really just the people and how you're educating them to, to get agencies are selling a 20% margin business, you know, 30% if you're 40, if you're doing it right.

00:41:28:08 - 00:41:51:15

Yeah, you can get all the way to 40. Yeah, yeah. But you need scale. Yeah. I mean, even like call it 30%, like, okay, I'm paying you 30% on the labor, you know, premium. But it's also not my headache. Right. I can focus on other things. Well I mean there's there's there's advantage. You don't need to pay. You know, even if you hire people, you're paying 20%, 15, 20% on health care.

00:41:51:15 - 00:42:17:16

Yeah. You know, and then also like, resource utilization, like, say, I wanted to hire someone in-house to do my email marketing, like, is you going to be doing that 40 hours a week? You know, because you have a bunch of clients like you can you can. You're augmenting staff. It's fractionalized. No, I think the key with the agency business is you need to have competitive pricing that makes it, you know, very logical for someone to say, I'm going to work with you over hiring X person for whatever the dollar value is, right?

00:42:17:16 - 00:42:35:02

There's a lot of great functions that I think like e-commerce agency, like for example, media buying is a very easy one to outsource, right? There's so many people that do it. It's very common practice. Well, I think it's really interesting to me. So I'm talking to jock. Is Guy from raindrop, right? Yeah, I'm speaking to him next week.

00:42:35:04 - 00:42:51:19

Like, why don't these guys just go into media buying? Because they're making great creative concepts. It's like, it's just. It would make sense. Yeah. We did have them do a little media buying in the beginning and didn't work out. Yeah. And we just like ten grand our first month. But that was only like two weeks.

00:42:51:19 - 00:43:09:03

And that was like mainly our friends. So the first like real month selling was like November. We did, like 20 grand, probably spent like 20 grand on ads or something like that. And we did 20 grand in December. Then we switched media buying firms to attention, and then we did 170 in January. Yeah, they just people just over month or like overnight.

00:43:09:04 - 00:43:27:05

Yeah. Now people are just more dialed in. So you kind of got to stay in your lane too. You know, you're actually crazy too. So basically, the infrastructure, the org chart is like it's you, your brother and rob your business partner, and then you basically have like 3 or 4 agencies underneath you. Yeah. And we do have a technical advisor.

00:43:27:05 - 00:43:44:06

These are mad scientists. He's been with us consulting from the beginning. You know, he's I very much view him as like a co-founder of the business as well. Okay. But he has, like, another job. You have another business to do that, right? Are you full time on laundry sauce? I mean, you only have so many hours in the day, but.

00:43:44:06 - 00:44:05:23

Yes. In theory, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Great. It was honestly awesome having you out. Yeah, I appreciate you. You telling us about your experience? I think we're we're really bullish on all of the new stuff that you're launching and, you know, excited, to see you guys break Doctor squatch. Yeah, some of those numbers. Yeah. We've grown faster than them up to this point.

00:44:06:00 - 00:44:21:05

Really? Yeah. I mean, they were it was a long time before they were able to. I mean, even get past like 5 million at revenue. Yeah. Right. It was like, what, three, five years? Yeah. I think that's what, raindrop said. Yeah. Well, you guys were just dialed from the from the jump. Yeah, we just did it right the first time.

00:44:21:05 - 00:44:37:07

It's by nicer by twice. You know, like that's another thing that you get with the agencies. You just get it done right the first time. So you end up saving money in the long run. I think in a lot. In a lot of ways. Yeah for sure. Well Ian, thanks so much for coming out. Appreciate it. We've got dinner.

00:44:37:09 - 00:44:48:07

But yeah, thanks for joining the pod. Cheers. Hopefully everyone enjoyed it.