08.04.2021
Episode 188: Jenna Owens, Founder of Fitish CBD Skincare
Summary
She has beat the fear, and now she has the brand to prove it. Learn how Jenna’s start as a radio host paved the way towards her founding of Fitish CBD Skincare, as she dared to give in to dissatisfaction. This change, alongside many other bold risks, allowed her to go from the world of entertainment to the world of beauty — all on her own terms.
Transcript
| Announcer | Welcome to Where Brains Meet Beauty®, hosted by Jodi Katz, founder and creative director of Base Beauty Creative Agency. |
| Jodi Katz | Hey everybody, it's Jodi Katz, your host of Where Brains Meet Beauty® podcast. Welcome back to the show. This week's episode features Jenna Owens. She is the founder of Fitish CBD Skincare. And if you miss last week's episode it featured Amy Gordinier. She's the founder and CEO of Skinfix. Thanks for listening. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the show. I am so excited to be here with Jenna Owens. She is the founder of Fitish CBD Skincare. Welcome to Where Brains Meet Beauty®. |
| Jenna Owens | Thanks for having me. |
| Jodi Katz | I'm excited to meet you, Jenna, and I've learned so much about you through our intake call, but you just revealed something that we really need to address, which is, what does your mom sometimes call the name of your company? |
| Jenna Owens | She'll say, "How's fetish going?" "It's going great, mom." It's a good accident. People always say that to me and I find myself now using it when I'm giving my email address, fitish.com. I'm like, "It's like fetish, but fit." |
| Jodi Katz | Right. It's just that she's going to find something different when she Google searches the company. |
| Jenna Owens | Yeah. Careful Googling that, mom. |
| Jodi Katz | Okay. So Jenna, let's go back in time to your 11 year old self and if someone asked you, what do you want to be when you grow up? What was your answer? |
| Jenna Owens | How fun. I would have said, well, at the time I was a super tomboy playing soccer, so I really idolized the Mia Hams and that sort of thing. I loved scary shows, criminal psychology. I probably would have tried to make a career out of one of those two things and now I'm doing neither. |
| Jodi Katz | Well you own a brand, I think you're sort of a psychologist, a cultural psychologist when we do customer targeting whatnot. |
| Jenna Owens | Hey, that's for sure. I would say I've learned... Any psychology, I can't stress enough how important I think psychology is you learn so much about yourself as a person in your interpersonal relationships and owning a brand and customers and how to treat people or why not to be offended when people treat you a certain way. |
| Jodi Katz | You had a really interesting career outside of beauty as a radio host. Can you tell us about that journey? How did you get into that business? |
| Jenna Owens | I was a journalism major in college and I really wanted to write for Rolling Stone or be a sports reporter. I wasn't quite sure where I would land there. I suddenly realized when I did these demo reels in college with my journalism degree, that all these TV stations were like, "Yeah, you're okay, can you cut all your hair off?" And I was like, "What?" This is what they asked for. They don't like long hair. They want you to be very preppy and conservative to be a reporter. I was like, "This is so not my style. I'm more of a creative type. This is not going to fly." So I thought, "Well, maybe I could get a job on the radio because people don't know what you look like. You have to master the art of storytelling. They can't discount you because either you're attractive or because your hair is too long or whatever it is." I jumped into that and that was actually a wonderful form of journalism for me. Because when you host a radio morning show, I joined an ensemble cast, so I was the newbie. I was always the youngest, there were four others on the show, but we were really a melting pot of cultures. It's wonderful to be people's drive to work in the morning and a high stress job for sure. I woke up at 4:00 AM every single day for about 13 years. So it definitely wasn't easy and then that led me to have this opportunity to create a brand for myself, with a platform I had organically built. |
| Jodi Katz | I want to go back in time because I think this is just so cool. How did you get the first radio job? |
| Jenna Owens | I auditioned. Actually I did a commercial for a strip club. I was doing voiceover work because I have this kind of raspy, deeper voice. I'm from Ohio originally, but when I had moved to Dallas to get this job and they liked that I had, when you're from the Midwest, they consider you to have a neutral accent, even though people in the south think you sound like a quote, Yankee, is what they say, but you don't have that very New York or Boston accent. You kind of have this weird neutral situation going on. Now people in the north think I sound, I picked up a little Southern cause I love it. I was doing commercials because I had this neutral accent. That was my first little gig, but one of the commercials was for a strip club in town and it had that imaging and that music like, "oonts, oonts." And I was like, "Topless bull riding and $12.99 shrimp buffet." I was talking real sexy. I was just out of college, my mom had to have been so proud. Of course, she's like, "Yay, sweetie. You're doing great." That was my first gig doing some voiceover work. Then I found out the biggest morning show in town was looking for a young female personality. I went in thinking I was going to have an interview, but that's not really how talent positions work. You don't interview with the boss or the host. They throw you into a mock on-air recording segment. They just kind of put me on the spot, about dating and things like that. I think I'm really good at hiding when I'm nervous. I can speak, public speaking was something I was good at. That was it. I got that gig just to be this young female correspondent on the show. |
| Jodi Katz | I think it's so fascinating that for 13 years you were a part of a lot of areas, actually you had 80 cities. So you were part of the entertainment. You were part of what got people to work every day, even if they hated their jobs. I think that there's a lot of responsibility in that role when most of the world doesn't love their jobs maybe the way that you do. |
| Jenna Owens | There is. I didn't love my job the way I think most outsiders would think you would love it. And I think that's a load to carry. Especially when you go through the things that all of us normal people go through, that you get your heartbroken. Or you suffer a huge loss and you're grieving, but people don't want to wake up every day and hear you all negative and depressed. Because they want to forget that they're negative and depressed about what they're about to do all day or what they're going through. There was definitely a balance there, there were definitely days that I would be yourself and you can be relatable, but then you can't be depressed every day, even when you're going through a hard time. Then you have to like, hold it in and cry the whole car ride home. But I think the nature of that is that you build this familiar sense with an audience just by the nature of speaking open and honestly. Imagine having to talk for four hours and be on your game for four hours every single morning, you're going to have to talk about the mundane stuff. You're going to have to talk about the embarrassing things, about your body hair, or about an embarrassing situation that happened at the gym. By telling all of that and being very TMI, you're getting women that are like, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe she admitted that, but me too." They feel like they know you and they become really loyal to you or feel like we have a good relationship, which we do. They know me more than I know them, but that's kind of the nature of people listening to you every morning. |
| Jodi Katz | The way you're talking about it, it's almost like the precursor to the Kardashians. Where we hear about the mundane we hear about their periods or their bladder infections or whatever. Letting people in a little bit. There's highs and lows, but it really boils down to this entertaining chance to step out of our own heads and live for a few minutes in someone else's world. |
| Jenna Owens | It's an escape. All forms of entertainment really are an escape from us and I think it's the most relatable form of escape because you're hearing about real people's lives that are kind of parallel to yours and how they deal with situations. It was a wonderful career to have. |
| Jodi Katz | What a great precursor to the world of influencer. Because you were influential even if we didn't use that language back then. Your fans knew you. |
| Jenna Owens | Yeah, unintentionally. Unintentionally. It was a strange thing when I started the radio job, Instagram wasn't what we know it to be now. That was interesting because I never got recognized around Dallas or anything because people didn't really know what we looked like. Then all of the sudden, when Instagram starting taking off more, then people started recognizing, we couldn't get away with those hidden mic on the street bits and stuff like that. It's so funny and this story may be TMI, but the first time anyone ever recognized me for anything, I think you think when you have a job like that, you're going to have a young girl who comes up to you and is like, "I love your outfit. I love..." You think that's what it's going to be like. But I remember so vividly, I had only been doing the job for a year or two. I was at a gynecology appointment. I was mid exam and my gynecologist I had seen for the last couple of years, since I lived in Dallas, she slides over on her stool very dramatically, glove on her hand and she goes, "Oh my God, I know you." I was like, "Yeah, you're my gynecologist and I've been coming here." She goes, "No, I know you, I recognize your voice." That's the trouble I would get in because my voice was so distinct that I would have moments in dressing rooms at the mall or in situations like that. Isn't that the last person you want to know what you do for a living and who you are? She's like, "Don't worry, I won't say anything to anyone." I was like, "Well, I hope not." Because what if I had an STD or what if I had something going on, then you think your gynecologist is going to be like, "Jenna on the radio has this." She's like, "Well, I can't do that." It spun this whole celebrity vagina skit that ended up being very funny on the radio. They made a theme song and again, that was a story that I told, which was funny. It's never quite what you think it's going to be, that kind of recognition. |
| Jodi Katz | Oh, that's so awesome. Okay. Well, let's talk about how you transitioned from 4:00 AM. wake up calls into life as a beauty entrepreneur. How did this happen? |
| Jenna Owens | This happened out of, primarily driven by a sense of unfulfillment. I like to be very honest about that because I think people would look at me having a job on the radio as, "Well, that's amazing. You have this salary position. It's so glamorous. You get to interview these celebrities." But frankly I was unfulfilled. I was unfulfilled creatively at some point it was great for a while, but I was tired of getting up at 4:00 AM. I recognized it wasn't going to be conducive to any sort of balanced life. My dating life was shit. Can I say that? Sorry. My dating life was terrible. I couldn't go out to dinners with friends. I was suffering on that level, truly. And I wanted to figure out how can I capitalize off this very genuine organic community of women and audience that I've built into something that, not just to hock a product real quick, but into something that is fulfilling. Ultimately for me to then have another chapter of my life that I can open up. And I sat on it for a long time. I really did. I don't think anyone that says this idea just was like born overnight and it was an instant success. I frankly just don't believe that. I think that you have to really sit on things to know you're not going to tire of it and to be passionate about it. I sat on this idea for a while and I just thought, "Well, I want to approach the real side of myself, the side of myself that is fitish." I know I've mentioned this to you when we talked before today, just that this word now, all the -ishes are really more commonplace. I think we live in a society now that people want to be -ish, everything, but you have to remember, this is over a decade ago that I was saying this word. I trademark this word and just cause I kept saying "fitish," because I thought, let's be genuine. I'm genuine. I do not like to work out that much, I do it just to feel better. 20 minutes here and there and I eat okay, ish. I do all these -ishes. I was just always very candid about that. I thought, "Well, how do I make a product out of this?" And I was so scared. I was so scared to a business. I do not have a business background. I am terrible with accounting. I do not have any kind of business sense. I didn't think, but I was created and I was passionate. I was like, "What if I sold these workout videos? The actual 20 minute workouts that I'm doing, because it didn't cost much money to make them. Then I could get that money back and do a product, which is what I wanted to do. But of course starting a product's really expensive. I did that, I made these Fitish, I made these 30-ish minute workouts, is what they were, with a trainer that I worked out with and so there was some professionalism to it and a bunch of people bought them. I made probably 40, 50 grand pretty quickly. And I immediately took that money. The luxury of having a full-time job is that you don't have to live off that money, even though you're tired, but I took that money and I invested it into this CBD skincare, which was a huge risk at a time. But it was something that I felt passionate about and I wanted to do athletic beauty products, so the process of doing the workout videos is what led me to come up with that product. |
| Jodi Katz | Let's go back to this feeling of unfulfillment because a lot of our listeners might work at big corporate environments and they do feel unfulfilled, but they also have this nagging feeling of guilt. Like, "Well, why would I be unfulfilled? I have a full-time job." Or "Why would I be unfulfilled? I worked for a cool brand." This is a really personal feeling that... I listen to my guide, I listen to my dreams. I'm really tied into what my body's telling me, but it's really hard to act on these things. How did you let yourself really trust this depression? |
| Jenna Owens | Because it lasted a while and I was tired of it. I think if you get to a place with anything, like in relationships we say it, you just hit a wall. I know that fear is really what holds so many of us back. Because it's true, when you have a salary job or... I've found a lot of people in my life or women that are still stuck in this rut and being miserable it's because, "Oh, I get a bonus at the end of the year, so I'm just going to hang on until I get my bonus." That's great and it's very scary to walk away from that and not have that sense of financial security because being frank, of course money is important for all of us. We need it to survive. But I think that if you can manage straddling two things at once, that's what I did because I was a little bit of a pussy about it. I didn't want to just quit a job. You know what I mean? And start a business from scratch. It was, "Can I start this business?" And yeah, you're going to be tired. You're going to be working two full-time jobs for a period of time. I did that for two years until I felt... Even then I wasn't a hundred percent sure I was making the right decision. I think a lot of women too, I've found, think that they're going to wake up one day and go, "I have to do it." I don't necessarily think that's true. I got to about 75% certainty that it's what I needed to do. That was a scary cliff jump moment for me because what if I fail? Okay. If you fail, you have skills for a corporate environment, you can find another job. You can go back and do it again. It's not starting over. I guess I started asking myself, to really answer your question, how will I feel if I don't do this in 10 years or in 20 years looking back on my life? I just had this overwhelming feeling of regret already. What if I don't do this? What if I do this and it fails? Okay, I'll maybe have to move cities and find another radio gig or I'll figure it out. If we're all motivated, hustling women, we'll figure it out. |
| Jodi Katz | It's so interesting you mentioned regrets because when I was younger, much younger than I am now, I had this personal philosophy of no regrets and it didn't have anything to do with jumping out of an airplane or any sort of death defying stunts. It was really just about if I have this feeling inside that's boiling up that I should ask for something or say hello to someone. If I'm having this physical reaction to the desire to open my mouth and honor my feelings or my needs at that moment then I should have no regrets, I should just do it. Really, at the time was probably about talking to boys and stuff. It probably wasn't anything super meaningful, but I didn't want to regret not saying hi to that person or not introducing myself or not connecting with someone. And I can really feel that bubbling up sensation as if it was yesterday. It was my no regrets philosophy because I don't think I even knew at the time, like I didn't have this big view of the world and how limited time we get here. But I knew enough that I didn't want to move on and still have my head in the past. I wanted to move forward and say, "I did what I wanted to do within the limits of the law." I think it's so hard for people to listen to themselves though. This is a really a challenging place for most people. |
| Jenna Owens | I was at a time too. It was hard because, you talk about no regrets, maybe as we get older, we always say we don't want regrets, but I definitely have regrets when it comes to people I've dated. If I had known now, or then what I know now. I think it's just that I wasn't feeling sturdy. I always felt like I had a good instinct that I was a good reader of people, but I was going through these weird periods of time that I was choosing poorly. And I thought, am I going to regret this decision? It's a scary thing waking up in the middle of the night, "Am I going to take out a loan and do this business? And you're going to have..." I think something that helped me get there kind of a combination of things, I talk a lot about having mentors. You can have mentors. You could be a mentor for someone. Because they listen to you all the time and you give very good advice and interview great people. So you don't have to know your mentor personally. And this is what one of my mentors told me. They're like, "Have a mentor that you know, have a mentor that you don't know that you just read their books because you like their business advice." And I started doing a lot of that. And I think that you build up courage just by listening to other people because when you read some of these other founders stories, it's just amazing. It makes you so excited. When you think about reading Shoe Dog. We're reading the guy that started Nike, Phil Knight, his story is absolutely mind blowing. If you really go back to what we know Nike to be, we're like, "There's no way I could ever do anything like that." But when you see really where that came from, it's motivating in a way, it really is. Because so many of these people had so many hardships and almost lost their business completely multiple times. You recognize that it's all about perseverance and a lot of luck too sometimes, but you have to just be there. You have to try it. You just have to keep pushing forward. That really motivated me, just finding some mentors and getting that advice about failure and listening to stories about failure made me feel a lot more comforted by my risk. |
| Jodi Katz | I love that Jenna. It's making me think of this book that I read a few years ago, not by somebody famous. It was essentially a furniture manufacturer, a family owned business and he chronicled every month his PNL. Literally every month at the end of every chapter, they were almost out of business. It was like that for 12 chapters, and when I finished that book, I'm like, "That's not going to be me. There was no great big resolution. There was no selling the company for millions of dollars. They were basically in the same place they were in the beginning of the year, at the end of the year. It was just so motivating for me to be like, I never want to live that life. I want to find a way to not be where they are. You talked about the fear of failure and I guess I take risks every day in my business and I don't actually think of the word failure, but I guess I think of the sensation. Why are we afraid to fail? Why would it have mattered to you at the time if this business idea of Fitish didn't sell $50,000 worth of videos? What would have been that fear? What is it based in? |
| Jenna Owens | In the beginning, I wouldn't say I had as much fear then as I do now, but I think it's the public humiliation, no matter on what scale. Which is ridiculous because I don't really care too much what other people think. Then again, I think that's the reason a lot of people don't start businesses because it becomes publicly known that you started a business. What are people going to think about your logo and what do people think about your idea? But you're the one doing it all. You're the one doing it. If it makes you happy, that's kind of what I've told myself is okay, if the fear is failure, so what? How much money will I be out? Then I realized it was about $10,000 if I didn't sell anything. That's what I spent to make the videos. I was like, "Okay. That's all our money, but I have a job and this can just be a little creative side hustle for me. I can just do what I want with it." Because that's what it was about for me at first. No one can tell me what to do. I get to decide on colors and logos and brand. And I needed it in my life, if that makes sense. I just needed a creative outlet and I never anticipated it would turn into what it turned into. But just by starting that to make me happier in the time. I guess that's it. When you start something, you actually invest some money. My other fear was, what if I hate this word? What if I hate this idea in a year? I turn back and I'm like, "Fitish, what? That word's not cool anymore." Those were my stupid fears. They were irrational. I just said, "You know what? I think I really like it. I really do. I think I really like it." I'll tell you what, right now it's been a few years since I started the whole website and all of it an I still like it. I still like the logo. I do. I wasn't sure. |
| Jodi Katz | It's so interesting that this thought about failure is really not tied to you. It's about what other people are thinking of you. We know that's bogus, but it's a really true, honest feeling. Being worried about how other people in my graduating class of college perceive me. But when we say it out loud, it means very little, but those feelings are so intense inside of you. |
| Jenna Owens | They are. I've found that feelings are temporary. I think we learn that with anything. Feelings are temporary and they feel very permanent when you're feeling them. But that goes to heartbreak, grief of any kind, stress. I'm really stressed in one moment, I'm going through IVF right now. I can't even tell you the range of emotions. I'm feeling, out on a daily basis from injections, I'm raging and annoyed and sad and depressed. It's interesting, because I know that I'm actually not any of those things. It's just a temporary medication side effect. That's really how feelings are. You're going to feel embarrassed momentarily or mad momentarily, but it's all fleeting. At the root of it, if you can go to bed every night and just kind of be proud of your contribution, a feeling of fulfillment is something that's much more permanent, I have found, feeling fulfilled. That's something that's stuck with me since the onset of this. |
| Jodi Katz | Yeah. If I could turn back time and change one thing about my attitude, it would be not caring what other people think of me. That was a really big pressure for me. |
| Jenna Owens | It comes with age, doesn't it? I have three girls all in different stages of their twenties that work for me. We're a really lean team and there's the good and the bad with hiring really young employees. What I love is getting to talk to them in a way that... I'm 37 next month, which isn't that old, but it feels like a world away from 25. I know that A, my business would not have been successful as I started it with the mentality I had when I was a 25 year old woman and some of their stressors that I've gone through. It's just amazing once you hit 30, you don't care as much what other people think. I think that's the beauty of starting this business when I did. I was 31, 32, I think when I started formulating the ideas and then it's really, you don't care quite as much. Because maybe you've realized life's really short. You want to get going on it finally, you don't live in that 20 year old bubble anymore. You just, frankly don't care as much anymore. And I think that there's a beauty in getting older, a little more emotionally mature, I suppose. |
| Jodi Katz | Let's switch gears to this idea of skincare. You told me that you looked allergic to working out on your skin. What does that mean? |
| Jenna Owens | I was just a tomato. You know those people, when they exercise, they're so red, you're like, "Are they okay?" That was me. "Are they going to die? They're allergic to exercise." I get really red, I really do. Very red and I'd never thought that was rosacea, but then I realized that if I get real nervous too, and I'm a little fairer skinned, I get red patches. I get real flushed and I thought I had been taking the CBD for a while. The CBD for me at the time, especially living in Texas was a huge risk. I've been a big proponent of the cannabis space in general. I feel like it's going to be, it already is and will continue to be very prevalent and kind of an epic life-changing thing for many people. But it's hard to convince people of that when it was formerly illegal. I had been taking CBD orally for things like, my anxiety, flying and sleeping. I was taking Ambien and Xanax. That was that whole period of time that I was just not feeling very good. And I thought I got to get off of this stuff. I started taking the tincture cause that was kind of the first CBD products on the market. I was like, "I'm feeling a little bit more balanced." Because that's really what you're going to feel with that. When it came to making these products, I knew originally before the CBD element that I wanted to do athletic beauty. I was working out one day and I thought, "I want to do a product because these women are spending a ton of money on workout clothes. Athleisure was having such a moment, still is. But women aren't showering, I'd be in the restroom and they're not showering. They're putting on some powder, lipstick, mascara, freshening up perfume. And then they're going across the street to have a margarita or whatever it is. Going to their kid's soccer game, this sort of lifestyle. And I thought, "Why aren't there more products in the crowded beauty space that actually help women like me?" People like me be on the go from a job to another job, to working out and having a life. That was the original concept that hit me. I had been taking CBD and I thought, "If it's so good when it's ingested, I wonder how it is mixed with some sprays for my skin." That was really it for me, it was trying it for a couple of months and a spray on my face and I thought, "Wow, my redness is going." It would usually take like a couple hours for my face to not be super red. It was going down within 20 or 30 minutes when I was using this spray. I thought, "Maybe there's a little something to this and it's working for my rosacea." I never could have imagined all of the other things that it would help. I just thought, "This is great." I made a cooling mist with it and that was my first product. People just started buying it out of, I think to support me, it was affordable. And then they were writing me going, "Oh my gosh, look at my eczema or look at my psoriasis." And I was like, "Yeah, wow. I had no idea it was going to do that." |
| Jodi Katz | Your initial customer was this active, busy person who was going from activity to activity. Is that still the profile of your target customer or has that changed over time? |
| Jenna Owens | I wouldn't even say that was the target. I knew from being on the radio that, because we did so many studies with the morning show of who are, they do these reports quarterly of who the average listener of the show is. She had a name. I think her name was Jennifer and she was 29 and she had a child and she had two jobs. She was a single mom. That was the average demographic. I kept that in mind, even though I didn't do any real strict study of my followers, but I had to imagine that people following me from the radio show were people that live in these certain markets. I think that was pretty true. It wasn't necessarily active, like they were exercising every day. It was just that they were busy, they needed more approachable and affordable skincare. I liked the athletic spin truly just because it felt like a niche, that it didn't really exist. I'm a little tomboy at heart, so I love the whole idea of these fun, sporty names and stuff. I just thought that was cool from a branding perspective, it was nothing more than that. Marketing to them, I would say we're about 70% women, very gender neutral. You're just going to get more content from women and more feedback than you do from men. But we have a lot of male customers as well because we don't use anything floral or really any fragrance at all. Really fresh, eucalyptus, aloes and everything. The cool thing about CBD though, is that it's not just a 29 year old woman, it's that you have maybe a 40 year old woman that buys the product and then her daughter's home from college or whatever, or high school daughter tries it and loves it but still has elevated packaging. That was important to me to keep it affordable, but still have cool branding and cool packaging. We don't really age discriminate because CBD can help everyone from young people to people that are seniors. |
| Jodi Katz | So our last topic that we have time for is on how to grow the business. Scaling is the big challenge. There's so many great ideas out there. There's so many beautiful products, but getting from launching into actually creating enough revenue to fuel growth and put money in your pocket is a different thing. What is your strategy for scaling? |
| Jenna Owens | Isn't that the biggest challenge? You think just having a successful product that does well the first year, and then you're like, "Oh, you need to double it year over year?" Yeah. And that just gets harder and harder. For us, the strategy has been sticking with the C2C. And I think that COVID really caught us a lot because we had gotten into major retail and A, didn't enjoy it, took a lot of bandwidth from my very lean team. My strategy has been, if we can continue to have a successful D2C business model, your margins are better because you're getting all your money. You're not giving 55 or 60% to a major retailer and paying additional teams to manage all of that. Because it's a lot of work it takes a lot of people and money to do that. When we saw that we have really good return customer rate. I think that's really important to focus on first. You want customers that come back, you don't want to be a one hit wonder that's going to make it really difficult. You want products that customers love. That was our first focus. Then once we nailed that and had a really good retention rate on those customers, now we're in the stage of, "Okay, how do we double that audience base?" For us, and speaking with other companies that are way farther along than me, it's really all about advertising. We're growing the skew count because having more of an offering, just the nature of that, you may bring in other customers from men to pet products, things like that. you're going to open up to who your potential customer is, but it's really getting good SEO and advertising spend and hiring, we're outsourcing a team that is really working on that and being pretty aggressive with that. But if you remain D2C, you're able to continue to use those profits and get the most out of every dollar and put it back into the business. I would say that's my recommendation. That's my plan for our company. |
| Jodi Katz | I love this focus where you have more control. I was actually meeting with a brand from another country and they want to enter the U S market and go into all the big retailers. I'm like, "Why would you want to do that? There's just so much cost, so much time, so much distraction. And then in the end, you'll probably end up getting kicked out anyway, because you'll never have enough money to drive the growth that they require." |
| Jenna Owens | It's so interesting. Yeah. I've learned so much, that I think a lot of us, when we're... I used to be a consumer. I was a consumer, avid consumer of beauty products. I'm going into Sephora and Ulta spending a whole paycheck. Trying everything. And when you learn, not that it's not a dream ultimately at some point to be in a store like that, because I think it's wonderful. But when you're a small business, I cannot stress enough how much I would recommend against it. And you think that you're not going to be successful until you get there. But I think you see these other companies, the Glossier of the world, and a lot of these other, they're more funded of course from the jump, but they're a straight D2C and why? Because it's a brilliant business model if you can sustain it and people have to come to you to buy product. I think being in a big retailer, if you're not equipped with all the capital to handle that, it'll put you out of business. I've heard so many horror stories about that. We're just going to ride this wave and grow it D2C as long as we can until we have more help and that's the right decision. |
| Jodi Katz | Well, Jenna, I love getting to know you, I'm so grateful for you, sharing your wisdom with me and my listeners today. |
| Jenna Owens | Thanks for your time, Jodi. Thanks for having me and |
| Jodi Katz | For our listeners. I hope you enjoy this interview with Jenna. Please subscribe to our series on iTunes and for updates about the show, follow us on Instagram @wherebrainsmeetbeautypodcast. |
| Announcer | Thanks for listening to Where Brains Meet Beauty® with Jodi Katz tune in again for more authentic conversations with beauty leaders. |
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