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:

Bulletin 📌

Wanna be featured on FSC? Play THE GAME... 🎲

Did you play the Game with us last week? Click The Pink Button continues for you at the bottom of the newsletter. And if someone wins this week - we're also going to feature you on FSC! Join us to get involved...

Btw, are YOU one of the fastest growing women-owned companies of 2023?

The Women Presidents Organization (WPO) & JPMorgan Chase Commercial Banking are on the hunt for nominees for the ranking of this year's top 50 fastest growing women owned companies (it's free to apply!).

Industry News You Should Prob Read 🗞

Support the Monterey Park victims fund. Femly needs our support. Ariana Grande will acquire her beauty brand’s assets for $15M, AND land in Sephora Feb 13th. After Sephora exit, Selfless by Hyram lands at Target 👀 Cowboy Ventures closes $260M across two new funds. TBD health raises $4.4M in seed funding to democratize access to inclusive sexual care. Fundraising is TOUGH, but beauty startups continue to nab funding. All Raise CEO Mandela SH Dixon stepped down from her position. This Colorado bill may prevent employers from asking for your age. Chipotle is launching a jewelry collection for Valentine's Day, huh? Levi's is celebrating the Original 501's 150th anniversary. Hillary Ball got promoted from Principal to Partner at Atomico. Anna Delvey is getting her own reality TV show, are we watching? The TikTok CEO is now to testify before Congress. Have you ever been called "lucky" for succeeding?

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Unbiased news for the modern gal, delivered daily to become your best self. With a mission to create a community of women who are ready to tackle their day, Gazette Gal shares stories in fashion, finance, beauty, lifestyle, and everything in between to keep you up-to-date and inspired. Content is meant to be digestible, not overpowering. It's crucial that we take control of our day and more importantly, time. Their readers always have something to learn, share, and smile about.

Join the Gazette Gal community. Where they talk about what matters.

🔑 Insights From This Week’s 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. 5 stategies for coping with Copycat brands 🐱

EP488: The Price of Success; Erin Deering Reflects on Building a $200M Swimwear Business, Triangl, and the personal cost to her mental health.

TRIANGL: the cult-status bikini you have most definitely seen everywhere, especially if you found yourself anywhere near a beach in 2013. That's when the brand had its big break, with Kendall Jenner spotted sporting the brand, after a genius marketing tactic had her reaching out to Triangl instead of the other way around (tune into the episode for that one, it involved a whole lot of FOMO and it's genius).

Queue 2014 and the brand experienced its first particular downfall that comes with "making it". Some would say it's the price of success, but there's no denying it can make life pretty difficult for a business owner. Copy cats.

The cold hard truth of the matter is: you can't stop them, and they'll never go away. BUT there are some strategies that will help you move forward:

1/ Get advice before you jump in 💁‍♀️ when you touch your toe in the legal route it can be costly and go on forever - get as much advice as possible, outside your solicitor, before you undertake legal processes at any stage of business

2/ Hire an IN-HOUSE legal team ⚖️ solicitors are there to protect you by making their own money, when your business reaches a certain size, make sure you're on the same team

3/ Do your paperwork 📝 protect your brand early on with all the right trademarks and copyrights

4/ Don't spend too much energy watching your back ⚡ back that your product is superior, and get the name and the brand to the point that folks don’t want the copycat version - they want the real deal

5/ Focus on innovation 💡 focus on what is going to accelerate, grow, move, and innovate your brand and product offering, and don’t get stuck dwelling on what you can't control

If you have a successful brand, you will be copied in some way. But focus on being the innovator, and keep moving forward ✨

2. Kitchen to chain reaction ⛓️ how to scale into 10,000 stores

EP490: How to get from 30 mom ’n pop stores to 10,000 retailers including Whole Foods and Walmart with Pop & Bottle co-founder, Jash Mehta.

The one thing Jash knew, was that in a world with very few marketing dollars, the best thing to invest in is your product. Truly be advocates of your product. Spread the word. Make sure the product is right. The pricing is right. The packaging is good. Those are really important things to invest in.

When your product lands on the shelf, it’s a huge billboard for who you are. How can we use that little bit of valuable real estate to stand out above all else? Ensure your product and packaging speak volumes. Catch that attention, and get people to try. Let the product speak for itself, and watch what happens next. 👀 Get the full run down of Pop & Bottle's retail expansion on the pod.

The Biz Ride 🎢

Straight from Majic.

This week we discussed all things TikTok: how to approach the platform as a brand-new biz; how much time and energy to invest; and whether to get your own face in front of the camera (no matter how confronting 🤳)

Coming up soon is a Ask Me Anything session with Mamamade's Sophie Baron to talk through equity crowdfunding in more detail and answer any questions you have that relate to your business - you'll hear her journey on the podcast this week!

If you’re excited to join conversations like this go to THIS link and when you sign up you’ll be prompted to book your 1-1 call with our founder Doone.

*The doors to Majic 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…

MON 👉 Sophie Baron from Mamamade - talking through her journey of equity crowdfunding 👶

WEDS 👉 MAJIC's First Weekly Virtual Coffee Chat @ 11:00EST 💗

FRI 👉 Doone's back - with a solo episode ✨ 👉& MAJIC's Second Weekly Virtual Coffee Chat @ 11:00AEST 💗

What to Read, What to Listen to 🤔

📚 The Lean Startup by Eric Ries: how today's entrepreneurs use continuous innovation to create radically successful businesses.

🎧 The Mentor hosted by Ron LeGrand: THE place where highly motivated entrepreneurs come to get their weekly dose of Ron LeGrand.

Job Alert Time! 💼

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

NYC 🇺🇸

• Ceremonia, the haircare brand rooted in Latinx Heritage, is on the hunt for a Sephora Account Manager to strengthen its team. More here.

• Fun razor brand Billie is looking for a Packaging Engineer to join their packaging design & operations team! More information here.

Sydney 🌞

• MCo Beauty, Australia's leading luxe-for-less beauty brand, is hiring a Performance Marketing Manager. Apply directly here.

• Women's boutique clothing brand Meshki is hiring a Digital Marketing Assistant to come and strengthen their team. More info here.

Hot HOT picks ❤️‍🔥

The team chooses one thing they couldn't get enough of last week:

• Doone/ These Bare Thrills underwear for when you're active and exercising - are so good!  

• Josephine/ 💎 I came across this b-e-a-utiful jewelry brand PDPAOLA and although I can't afford it (yet!) I can't get it out of my head

• Bec/ ☕ Velty's decaf coffee (it's seriously delicious and also happens to be filled with gut-friendly ingredients) & use code: BEC15 for an extra treat

The Game: Click the Pink Button 🚨

Welcome to a new game we're going to play every week. It’s called Click The Pink Button. We've also added in a Feature to the prize pool this week meaning that if you win - we'll collaborate on a feature around you or your brand!

The rules are simple... 

Reply to this email with a guess of how many times the Pink Button below will be clicked.

Whoever guesses the correct number of clicks wins the amount of money in the prize pool.

If no one guesses the correct number, the prize pool doubles and the game continues. We had some great guesses last week - but no winner!

Some important pieces of data to know before you guess:

• As of sending, Female Startup Club's newsletter has 5,721 subscribers

• Each person can only click The Pink Button once

• You don’t have to click The Pink Button

• You can forward this email and have your friends click The Pink Button

• Everyone could collectively guess an intentionally wrong answer in order to double the prize pool for next week

Taking all that into account, make sure you get your guesses in before next Monday.

Let's playyyyyy!

PS: If you're a beauty founder, you might get some pointers from this post on @femalestartupclub read it here ✨