Hi! I’m Doone, your hype girl in business. This is your weekly source of inspiration & information on all things in the e-commerce and CPG space, read by like-minded Entrepreneurs - that happen to be women - like you. If you find value in this content please like & share above, or forward it to someone in your network. I love it when you do that! If someone forwarded you this email you can subscribe here:

Industry News You Should Prob Read 🗞

Trade show company Emerald acquires Bulletin to bolster indie brand experience. Woolworths snaps up Shopper Media for $150M cash. Black Girl Freedom Fund invests over $4M in 68 organisations. Subscription e-commerce is growing, and you want to jump on the bandwagon. Lilia's egg-freezing launches the future for millennial women. Feminine hygiene market growing at a crazy rate. The brand bringing ecomm to Indonesia's small cities. Over a million women have left the workforce in the last two years, what's happening now? 

P.S. we're getting 🌶️ on being the first on the scene with to female ecomm breaking news and are posting everything directly to our stories over here ✨

P.P.S. a big thanks to Norby, whose marketing tools make it ridiculously easy for us creatives to stay on it (& cute!) when it comes to reaching y'all 💘

🔑 Insights From This Week’s repeat episodes on the Female Startup Club Podcast

Directly from the women building the world’s most exciting businesses in the e-commerce and CPG space.

1. 3 lessons that turned this failing fashion entrepreneur into an 8-figure founder ✨

EP371: Learning from Lezlie Karls, Co-Founder of Mid-Day Squares, the chocolate bar brand changing the snack game. 

We learn a lot from others’ successes, but there’s undoubtedly even more to learn from their failures. They’re just a little bit trickier to talk about. I'm so grateful that Lezlie had no trouble pinpointing the exact reason her beloved luxury fashion brand, Hector, failed. And that she’s ready to pass on her lessons.

1️⃣ LESSON #1: Be your own consumer 🍫

If you're not buying into your own product, how can you expect anyone else to?

2️⃣ LESSON #2: Utilize your community 🤗

Clothing line Hector was within the 1% price point. We’re talking high-end fashion. This meant Lezlie’s community couldn’t afford to support her. When launching Mid-Day Squares it became easy for people to buy her product. Easy for people to support. This all helps create virality. 

3️⃣ LESSON #3: Put yourself out there 🦚

Lezlie was a BTC kind of gal. But what is more engaging than seeing a 23-year-old running around NYC in heels trying to get into stores? If that’s not inspiring, I don’t know what is. But she didn’t show that. She didn’t know how to. How to tell her story. How to put herself out there. How to market herself.

A good Founder knows how to throw in the towel. So she did. After 3 years. Took some time off and realized what to do differently in the next venture. 

2. Stay organic baby ✌️

EP373: An episode with the icon you’ve probably seen on the web doing her super cool things, the one and only Lil Ahenkan (Flex Mami).

Lil is a total boss at organic marketing. So much so, that it drives 80% of all sales for Flex Factory. So what's the deal here?

Organic content isn’t an overnight quickie. It takes time, planning, and a serious amount of effort. Lil’s content may look totally done on the fly and casual, but it’s all highly organized, intentional - and takes TIME to create. Use your lead generation tools. Speak to your audience in an organized environment. Through this, allow your message to get across as intended. When you want to, as opposed to when the algorithm blesses you with a view. Take control. Show up for your community. Be unique. 💫

🧡 We know, easier said than done. All that planning can get a little overwhelming. We've found Zapier's work automation tool pretty fab in automating all our processes, leaving lots more time for the fun stuff. 💃

3. Bootstrapping puts focus on profitability 🔎

EP375: The blueprint to building a $100M brand in 5 years from Ju Rhyu, founder of Hero Cosmetics. 

Ju launched Hero Cosmetics back in 2017 and can now boast a sale every three seconds. That means she has sold a product in the time it just took you to read this introduction. Can you imagine?

The reason for this insane growth all lies in the power of bootstrapping 👢

Bootstrapping is good because it forces the founder to really focus on being profitable from the very beginning. For Ju this meant not paying herself a fancy salary or spending too much on PR firms. It was a "boots to the ground approach", and she was consistently resourceful. This in turn makes a business all the more attractive to investors. I think this is such a key insight. Focus on bootstrapping your business in the beginning until you have proven traction and figured out the foundations. You might just find you don’t need to raise. 👀

Biz Wins & Failz 🎢

Straight from Hype Club.

We’ve got an ongoing Biz Wins & Fails chat going in HC. This is where we can learn what we can hopefully avoid in our own journeys, and what keeps us feeling like we are not alone in celebrating those highs.

This week, Ami Bateman (building Pleasant State) had some great news to share:

Woohoo! Nothing better than to hear about girls Hype Girls making moves 😍

*The doors to Hype Club are open, now’s the time to join our community of uplifting entrepreneurs building the future CPG companies! It doesn't need to be lonely. 

What’s on this week? 👀

Let’s see what we have in store for you this week, as we'll be replaying some of our favorite episodes from the last few years...

MON fave hits: Michelle Cordeiro Grant from LIVELY - today bras and undies, tomorrow the world 👙

WEDS fave hits: Margaret Wishingrad from Three Wishes - the healthy cereal of your childhood, everything-free 🥣

FRI fave hits: Jessica Warch from Kimaï - creating delicate jewelry designs with ethical diamonds 💎

What to Read, What to Listen to 🤔 

📚 Anti-fragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: standing the fact of uncer­tainty on its head, making it desirable and even necessary.

🎧 History Hit hosted by Dan Snow: exploring the deep history behind today's headlines – giving you the context to understand what is going on today.

Job Alert Time! 💼

Check out these cool women-owned DTC job listings on our radar:

REMOTE 🌎

• Curlmix, the curly wash and go system, is looking for a Graphic Designer to maintain the company's brand aesthetics. More info here.

NYC 🗽

• Thoughtful luggage brand Away has a bunch of cool job openings in Marketing, from VP of Brand to Senior Creative Producer. More here.

LA 🌞

• Perelel, the fertility vitamin company, is hiring a Senior Product Development Manager to report directly to the Co-CEO. Interested?

• Fast-growing botanical start-up AMASS is looking for a Business Intelligence Analyst to join their Digital Team. More information here.

& whilst I have you here...

Since hearing about it on Tim Ferriss' podcast last year, I've been ultra-consistent in fitting an Athletic Greens AG1 smoothie into my day, every day (which, if you know me, is quite the achievement). They make it so easy to fit all your nutritional needs into your day, and I'm pretty proud to now be able to pass along the pointer through our platform - and hopefully improve someone's life the way Tim did mine. 💚

If you resonate with something in this week’s newsletter we’d love to know! Share it with us on Instagram tagging @femalestartupclub & @dooneroisin