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!

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Bulletin 📌

CREDO: Clean Beauty Summit ‘22 🦋

📍 City Market Social House, LA 📅 June 4th, 2022 🔖 $49-`$199

Join Credo for this one-day summit where they bring together the best brands from the clean beauty biz. Expect to be wowed, inspired, and beautified.

The Hype Club: Workshop 🧰

Every month we bring in an expert in the DTC space (often it’s a guest from the show!) to provide us with tactical biz lessons and strategies along with a general catch-up to chat! Last week we welcomed Lisa Guerrera from Experiment Beauty, and it was SO good. We’ll give you the low-down on all we learned in next week’s newsletter, keep your eyes peeled. 👀

To join our Wednesday catch up & community, you can become a member of Hype Club here. Upcoming: On June 8th we have an Amazon expert stepping us through getting your store front set up and all the to-do’s/not to-do’s.

P.s. If you can’t attend the live sessions, they’re recorded so you can watch it back in your own time.

Industry News You Should Prob Read 🗞

Daye’s Valentina Milanova is a speaker at WIRED Health (London). Also, they’ve developed the first flushable tampon wrapper. Pretty damn cool. Selfmade wants YOU on their junior advisory board. Are you joining Credo’s clean beauty summit? Bite Beauty is closing its doors. UnicornDAO raises $4.5M to empower women and LGBTQ NFT creators. Dream Big Darling announces the 2022 ‘FLOurish’ program. DTC startups demystifying women’s wellness. Bansk Group buys Amika, Eva NYC haircare brands.

🔑 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. How to survive (& thrive) your first year in eComm ✨

EP340: We’re learning from That Pommie Girl, Sarah Ashcroft, about how she went from a fashion blog to a £5 million fashion empire with SLA The Label.

Learning number one: you literally need a crystal ball in the eComm world. You just have no idea how much you’re going to need and whether it’s going to do well.

What can Sarah teach us from making it through that notoriously knotty first year?

1. Do not rush 🐢

Launching SLA The Label, it was nowhere near where Sarah would have liked it to launch at. First and foremost, give yourself the time to feel that you are 100% ready to launch. There’s so much that can go wrong. If you’re not ready that can be quite detrimental.

2. Launch with a key product 🔑

Also, don’t expand your initial products and offering too quickly. Stick with your original offering for at least a year and really nail that down. There will be fewer struggles. Nailing that thing, doing it well, getting a good customer base that comes back for that thing… That’s the way to go. (Sarah learned this the hard way).

And above all, know that the first year is going to be jam-packed with silly mistakes. You’re going to look back and cringe. It’s all part of the process.

2. Launching with 10,000 units out the door 🚀

EP342: Learning from Kayla Castañeda about her Latina better-for-you aguas frescas brand Agua Bonita and how they made their mark on the bev industry.

It was a wildfire thing. Kayla was generous enough to let me dive into the ins and outs of what it takes to orchestrate such a super successful launch. 👇

• The people were ready for Agua Bonita: this product was just completely absent from the market, and people wanted it - simple but hugely impactful

• Word of Mouth: they told their friends to tell their friends to go on and tell their friends (you get the gist) about their cool brand

• Give-Aways: when you are so new, it doesn’t matter how approachable you are, free is always most approachable for anyone

• Pretty Packaging: Agua Bonita can be deemed extremely IG-worthy, meaning it’s super sharable, meaning you’re going to see it everywhere - smart

• Agua Bonita was ready for the people: extensive research into where they can find their consumers, and then showing up in their life throughout the day

Kayla also shared some pretty key know-how around a concept called free-fill when it comes to giveaways in retail. Heard of it? Check out the full chat for the low-down.

FSC Mini-Series from the Founder ❤️

In my ongoing mini-series within the FSC podcast, you’ll hear directly from me, your Host & Hype Girl about all the goings-on with the Female Startup Club. This week, we’ll be taking a deep dive into the beverage space going over the biggest learnings our multi-millionaire beauty-founder-guests have gained from founding and building the brands absolutely killing it in their space right now. So Let’s get straight into it.

1. Your product needs to be GREAT 🐘

This is a no-brainer but I can’t tell you how many times I pick up a product and think to myself - I would never buy this again. Zoe Zakoutis reminisced on this in talking about how much time and money it took to bring Earth & Star to market. So much time, and more money and iterations than she cared to admit. But if you don’t have a good product, you’re basically screwed. And then it’s all been for nothing.

2. Building with intention 🧠

It’s really important to ask yourself (often) what is your aim, or purpose? Your intention is your story, and that’s what’s individual to you. It’s what makes you unique and sets you apart from the countless other brands. And for you, having that north star will give you all the motivation you need to do what you do every day.

3. Ask those burning questions 🔥

Sharelle Klaus from soda brand DRY totally agrees that if she had just asked more questions early on it would have opened so many more doors for her. It’s time to quiet that little voice of self-doubt that’s telling you not to ask that question, and to stop being afraid to seem uninformed or even dumb. Knowledge is king, and you want to gain as much of it as you can. Go make that phone call. Slide into DMs. Email the people you admire. The earlier on in the journey you realize, the more you’ll gain.

4. Your network is your worth 🤑

On the topic of using your network, last year Melanie Masarin, founder of Ghia, reminded us that your network is not just a place for advice, it’s also your most valuable asset. A lot of founders in the beverage space have initially raised a friends & family round. It’s a very intimate affair, and there’s also a lot of value to it. These are the people that you want to win from this, these are the people that are on your team.

5. DTC trumps 🛍️

You should absolutely, without a doubt, create your beverage brand with a DTC model in mind. Chatting to Debbie Wei Mullin about her specialty coffee brand Copper Cow Coffee last year reminded me just how powerful e-comm really can be in this department. Copper Cow has seen its growth explode since moving from 90% wholesale to a 70% e-commerce DTC model, and she hails the move as the most powerful thing she’s seen since starting her brand.

6. Failure is part of the journey 🌎

Some of us prefer to forget that failure is inevitably part of the journey when embarking upon this wild ride. Obstacles are just part of this journey, and so are mistakes. Sashee Chandran from Tea Drops put it perfectly when she said that entrepreneurship is simply expecting a series of failures or obstacles every single day.

7. Burning passion is your sign ❤️‍🔥

And last, but certainly not least, is the learning that if you feel this burning passion in your belly, there is absolutely no reason not to get started on this immediately. Allison Ellsworth was the inspirational reminder for this, in chatting to me about Poppi. That excuse you were telling yourself not to? Forget it. This is your sign to get started.

For the full breakdown of these points, examples, and all the practical tips on how to implement them in your biz check out the episode, live TODAY. Give it some love.

What to Read, What to Listen to 🤔

📚 Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker: unlocking the power of sleep & dreams.

🎧 The Foodtrainers Podcast, hosted by Lauren Slayton: weekly real-life solutions to your wellness questions, while keeping things light and fun.

Job Alert Time! 💼

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

REMOTE 🌎

• Parachute Home, making bedding and bath essentials for a comfy home, is on the hunt for an Associate Planner. Read more here.

Australia 🌞

• Sheet Society, Australia’s favorite bedding company, is hiring a Marketing & Creative Coordinator to strengthen their team. Something for you?

NYC 🗽

• PAIR Eyewear is building the first personalized eyewear brand and they’re looking for a CRM & Lifecycle Marketing Manager. Read more here.

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