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Hey everyone, I'm Austin Hankwitz.
And I'm Denise Torres. Welcome to Mind the Business Small Business Success Stories, a podcast brought to you by iHeartRadio and Into It QuickBooks. In each episode, Austin and I chat with small business owners as they share their stories about the ups and downs of owning a small business. Plus we'll learn from their experience on how you can help fortify and strengthen your own business.
That is right, and I am so excited for our guests today, But before we introduce them, I wanted to talk to you about your early day running your business. Was there ever a moment where you thought you may have to change your plans for your business because you weren't maybe hitting your financial goals.
Jennis, I'm so glad you brought this up, Austin.
I think this is a struggle that a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with in the beginning, because we're kind of just throwing spaghetti at the wall and trying to see what sticks. And for me, I found myself just doing a lot of different things as a personal finance content creator.
I was doing speaking engagements and workshops and one on one coaching and trying to launch a course, and doing affiliate marketing and influencer marketing, and I just felt like I was being stretched so thin that I really started to think about what are the highest return on investment activities that are going to get me to my financial goals. Let me focus on those things and do less of the stuff that feels like a heavy lift without a
lot of rewards at the end. I'm curious if you've had an experience like that to Austin.
I have, Jennie, and that's so cool that we really align so well on you know, what are those highest ROI return on investment deliverables that us as content creators can create and share with our audiences to just get the best bang for our books. So for me, what that was is kind of reflecting and thinking, Okay, you know, I have a limited number of perhaps one off brand deals I can do, and a limited number of perhaps
one off speaking engagements. But I could write a newsletter and it could go to two people, or can go to two hundred thousand people. I still just wrote that newsletter once, right, So thinking about the compounding effects of creating content and sharing it and distributing it with so many people was major for my business. I don't think though, that there was ever a time where I really was like, wait a second, am I doing the wrong thing here?
I've always been really just strongheaded and encouraged by my audience and everything else that I've been able to build alongside awesome creators like yourself, Jenius over the last couple of years. But I'm right there with you right figuring out that best ROI time spent and just doubling down on your strengths and what you know best. But enough about us, Let's introduce our guests. At the start of March twenty twenty, when it felt like there was nothing
else to do. Emily Doyle and May Quak got cracking on building a bar setting suncare brand that could be loved and used by all. May being an avid surfer and darker complexioned Gal, had severe pain points within the existing options on shelf, plagued with white cast problems and difficulty finding quality SPF on the go, and Emily, a freckly fair skinned skincare lover, was frustrated by the lack
of innovation and skincare benefits on the market. By combining their passions and defining what was missing from their experience as the lifelong users of sunscreen, it was apparent what Dune Suncare needed to be, not only for them, but everyone else as well. Two years later, they have launched a skin tone inclusive clear gel suncare line packed with skincare benefits that's created for and accessible to all. Emily and May welcome to the show.
Thank you, Thank you for having us.
Love the bio, Love the bio. May. The first kind of question I have here here is and when I was doing the research and the background all that fun stuff, I was just fascinated that you all were able to sort of create skincare products so like, are you scientists? Are you skincare professionals? How did the idea of this company come about? And where does the name Doune really come into play here?
As well?
Well, I'll kick it off.
So, as you mentioned, March twenty twenty, I was supposed to be on a weekend surf trip. I ended up being there for three months and I called Emily and I realized that we finally had the time and space to build our dream company. We decided to combine our passions. You know, like you mentioned, I am a surfer, I'm in the sun all the time, I'm using sunscreen daily. And there was nothing that I gravitated towards or that I felt was innovative and accessible and fun.
Yeah, I got to be honest. I was so in love with skincare, even at a really early age.
You know.
My mom used to take the grocery shopping after school, and upon entering the grocery store, I would gravitate toward the skincare aisle and steal products off the shelf and sneak them into the grocery cart, hoping that my mom would never notice. And that love infiltrated into my career after college so I ran a number of PR marketing
departments for a few fashion designers in New York. So I worked on everything from contract negotiation points to building and executing on large scale PR marketing initiatives and press days and in store launches. So that was really my first step into understanding the beauty market.
So when we came.
Together to build Doune, we are like, we want two for one products. Product is paramount, it's got to be something that's totally differentiated in the space. We wanted to be skin tone inclusive. We were pulling benchmarks from Asian market. Clear gel was something we really wanted, and we knew convenience and extasibility was key. So we kind of like came out of the gates right away focused on retail distribution strategy and accessible price point.
So let's talk a little bit more about once you made that big break and things were coming out, where did the name of Dune come from? Why Dune? What does Doune mean?
All?
Right?
So Emily was on her daily COVID beach walks and she called me and she was like, I got the name Dune, And she ran over to my house and like, of course, I'm like the pessimist, and I was like, that won't ever work. But eventually I was like, this is perfect.
Yeah, so dune. We loved how quick and easy it was to stay. But moreover, it's universally understood in its definition. So dunes are natural resilient barriers for our beaches and everything inland. They helped protect, and when you think about it, that's exactly what we are trying to do or achieve rather with our sun.
Caroline, I love that.
I love that. So let's get into the nitty gritty. Right, let's talk business. Let's talk numbers and metrics, all the fun things. The first year of operating a business is usually the make or break year, Right, what was the biggest benchmark, internal benchmark that you all had made for yourselves that said if we hit this, we got to keep going. And it was there ever a moment where you thought, oh my gosh, we might not hit this benchmark. We're gonna have to shut down.
Oh man, Yes, yeah. We launched on June eighth of last year, twenty twenty two. We had actually solicited the support of our PR agency, Autumn PR. They're amazing to help drive our long lead press and our short lead like digital press initiatives prior to launch to put us on the map, and they absolutely blew it out of the water. I obviously have to give us a little bit of credit because the product and the.
Branding is good too.
But you know, we were in book in Vogue and l and Vanity Fair and Harper's Bizarre. We made Oprah's June O list. So this was really in the first month that we were off to the races. And then shortly thereafter, you know, we joke that we received the hottest DM slides we've ever received from Alta and Urban Outfitters.
So Alta reached out to us in July, you know, month to post launch, the biggest beauty retailer in the country, asking to carry the line at the start of this coming year, which we are fast approaching our launch in two weeks from now, in five hundred and fifty doors across the US. But we knew when we had retail interest, we had something. We knew we wanted to be an omni channel business. We knew that's how we were going to find success, and an omni channel approach is a
multi pronged retail strategy. So man I started calling visiting all of our favorite specialty retailers, boutiques, high end surf shops, grocers, and hotels. So we secured about twenty of those accounts right launch. But I would say the biggest hurdle for us was about five months pre lunch, we had gotten a call from our packaging supplier and a contract manufacturer we were about to go into contract with, thankfully we
hadn't yet. We had learned that our packaging was not going to be able to deliver until August of the following year, so pushing our lunch to September, completely missing
the sun season. By the way, we had already raised capital, so we had investors and partners that were like heavily counting on us for a summer pre summer launch, and we had also found out from our contract manufacturer, with the raw material shortages and all the ships being held up at the ports, it was going to be almost twice the cost.
So we were devastated.
I mean, we thought for sure that was it may and I scrambled to find new partners that help us to launch in time and at the price points that we needed to offer accessible formulations, and we were.
Able to pull it off.
But yeah, that was that was the time when we felt like this is really a make or break it moment. So big kudos to our partners for really like doing everything in their power to support us in that moment.
And look where you are now, right five hundred plus Alta Beauty Doors like that is so so exciting. It actually it leads me to my next question here before I flip it over to Genie, I'm really curious, what's your strategy for differentiating your product and brand against all of your competitors, Right, skincare is such a congested market, like Ulta must have seen something specific and unique with you. What was that strategy of differentiating yourself?
You know, we really broke the category, the suncare category out into two sectors. So you have the mass brands like the copper Tone Swine Tropics, Banana Boats of the world that we've all known their legacy household brand names. And then you have the specialty, more modern brands, you know, the supergroups Kolas of the world.
And when we.
Were really like at the inception point of the brand, when we were idating on what the whole was in the market, it really came down to accessibility, quality products, branding and universality. So we really were looking at our competitors who were predominantly speaking specifically in the specialty space to women. While we love our women, like sunscreen is not marginalized, it's for everyone to wear everyday, year round, and so we really wanted to lean heavily into marketing
to everyone. Today, we have data that points to the back end of our Shopify which says that our age demographic range is between sixteen to sixty five and we have almost a fifty to fifty split between a male female customer, which is remarkable.
I love that insight and I'd love to dive in more to the profitability aspect of business. Right, So the first couple of years of business, you're usually reporting losses unless you just have a Unicorn launch that you know, super profitable. Did you guys find immediate success.
We're currently not profitable yet, but next year we will be.
Yeah.
I mean I think that's part and parcel with how things work, right, Yeah.
For sure, Yeah, we're we're planning to be profitable early on. We are planning also to have a pretty banner year comparatively last year. That our growth is pretty substantial just based on you know, all of our retail partnerships that are secured. We've been incredibly lean to be honest, you know, we've really like raised nominal funds relative to how much growth we've had. And we're a two woman band. We work with an onslaught of freelancers, contractors and agency folks.
But May and I are running every corner of this business by ourselves and have been for over three years. We are really excited to close. Is there a fundraise if like this is like a plug for investors who want to come to the table, but we are really hoping to put money towards building a team at this point, which it would require for scaling. So Sunscreen unpnounced to May and I as it's an OTC product meaning over the counter, is incredibly time consuming if you're starting a
product from zero and also incredibly expensive. If we had known what we know now then at start, I don't know if we would have been here today. But that's why there's really pretty nominal competition when it comes to who the main players are and who's driving the most revenue per year.
So you alluded to some of the supply chain issues that you ran into, and I'm curious if you have any advice around building those relationships with vendors that are affordable and that meet your standard of quality, Like what's your best advice there.
We did a lot of vendor vetting, like we were always in meetings with every different contractor or raw material supplier just to gather all the correct info we found to write partners that can meet our deadline and goals.
She's making it sound much easier than it is.
It's not.
It's not it's not easy. It's definitely not easy.
To lean into what may mentioned. You know, I think the critical component here is setting a goal for yourself. So let's just say time. It's really challenging, you know, with all the testing and compliance and if you have clinical hard claims that you're putting on the front of pack, you have to test against all of those, which costs money and require certain banks of time. So I would say start with your desired time, add cushion in, and
then work backwards from there. It's constantly like problem solving and finding solutions so that you can hit your targets.
Coming up on Mind the Business small business success stories.
We both had to like drop our egos and get super vulnerable with each other and just be honest about where our strengths lie, what we want in the business, like how we both want to lead.
We'll be right back after the break. Welcome back to Mind the Business Small business success stories brought to you by iHeartRadio and Into It Quick Books. So, as a company that was developed during the pandemic, what sort of safety neess have you built into your business model to be able to weather economic storms.
Yeah.
One of our longest standing and most valued partners is our finance and OPS team. They've been with us for over a year and a half. They've really helped build our entire financial model projecting for the next five years. We're constantly updating that to input actuals and put updates based on new relationships that we have or sell through expectations from retailers, etc. I also think it's really imperative to build an infrastructure, a strong, solid foundation and business
infrastructure straight out of the gate. We've worked for a number of different companies that hire a finance team for like, after being in business for five years and the books are a mess and everything is delayed, or you've jeopardized relationships with some vendors that you were working with for years, so we're like, we got to get this tight, got to get it tight right away.
That really leads me into my next question here, which is like in the early days, how are you really balancing these budgets of income expenses? Like what was the most difficult part of figuring out the cash flows and how did you really overcome that. Was it your finance team that you were able to really lean on or I mean, who taught you all to think that I need to focus on this day one right out the gates to make sure that four or five years down the road it's not a mess.
Well, I think both of us had come from the production world, so we've worked on production budgets. So like we've both were really meticulous about budgeting and making sure we hit those goals. You know, from the get go, we've set a long term goal of our budget what we can put in personally, because remember we didn't have jobs and we worked against that. We split costs in the beginning and just make sure that we hit those numbers.
Yeah, I think it's understanding what you have and what you need to work against and what you absolutely need to spend money on. Like do you absolutely need to build a team right now, or can you be lean and handle it yourselves as founders, you know, you're constantly trying to figure out what's.
The goal here.
For us, it was product. We had to spend a lot of money up front on product. Who would we be without it? And not to mention, building an OTC product from zero means a year and a half of your time and a lot of money upfront. So while we've also been able to start production on products that we're going to launch at the end of next year,
even now we're also facilitating terms. So it's looking at like, all right, I've been in a relationship with this vendor for a year now, we can do incremental spend against the quote, or we can come down here because of X mistakes, or you know, you get into like negotiation mode to cost save as well.
That's interesting. I never really thought about it like that, But I guess you're right back to though, what may was just kind of alluding to before, with you know, being unemployed. You know, as you were unemployed when starting Doune, what were some of the advantages and disadvantages of nurturing your brain child without having another job to supplit your time between.
Well, we both had to take turns to pick up you know, freelance gigs, but like in between our days, like we'll be taking on pitches and VC meetings and just you know, putting one foot ahead of each other. And big kudos to Emily, she sold Disney stocks to pay for our first chemist.
Don't worry. It was supposed to put my kid through private school, but they'll be going to a different school.
Yeah, you know.
This over lining to COVID, and we always say this is time and space. You know, there was one thing that May and I are steadfast on, which is work life balance. And we weren't willing to forego our evenings after a full time day job or our weekends to really put all of our muscle energy money into building a brand, particularly in the suncare space, because it would have taken us five years.
So we were really lucky we.
Capitalized on the time that COVID allowed us. And it's wild that COVID really lasted two and a half years, which is exactly how long we needed to bring our launch collection to market. But we also say like at that moment in COVID, like so many people, you kind of have to torch your ego on fire. You have
to put it in the trash and start again. You can't think of out like, oh I I climbed the ladder for all these years, and I made it to the top of pr and marketing, and like none of that mattered anymore.
It was all trivial.
We are thinking about our health and the well being of our friends and family and ourselves. It was negotiating rent with our landlords to try to come down on monthly costs, and you figure it out.
We tapped into our savings as well, so as every you know entrepreneur has probably has had to do.
Yeah.
Absolutely, So I'm curious how do you guys keep the friendship and still be business partners and you know, keep everything flowing, because I know that's not easy.
Oh my god, this is such a weighted one. It's so personal personal. The relationship you have with a co founder is deeper and more intimate than any other relationship you'll have, including a romantic one. And you know a lot of people start businesses with the no that there's going to be a fifty to fifty divide. You really don't know how you're going to operate together. Especially if you've never ever worked in business together before. But I think where May and I really came together was in
our overall value system. And it's the same way that we vet partners to come into the company. But you have to have hard conversations, particularly when you're a little ways in and you realize like there's strengths that one person has the other doesn't. It's a division of power maybe equity. I mean, we went through some really challenging times to get to where we are now, and it's made us all the stronger and better as co founders
and leaders. And you know, we always say everything starts from the top, so we have to be as solid as possible to be able to lead and manage team to success.
And I'll add on to that, we both had to like really drop our egos and get super vulnerable with each other and just be honest about where strengths lie, what we want in the business, like how we both want to lead. Also balance understanding each of those personalities. Understanding like when someone needs a little break, you know, it's like a relationship.
Yep, yeah, I love that.
Yeah.
So you know, Dune Suncare has seen a lot of success. We talked about Alta. I believe you guys are crushing it on Amazon. So how did you plan on growing a company that has experienced such a large success so new into its launch and like, what's next for Dune Suncare?
Right?
Give me the play by play on the next You mentioned five years, what's the next twelve twenty four months? What are your dream retailers? Where you headed? Am I going to see y'all on Shark Tank?
Like?
What's going on here?
Yeah?
I mean, gosh, We've really been so lucky on the big box front. We went to Amazon actually as early as we could. We made the cash program for Blue Mercury. We sit at the front of all those major doors across the US, Urban Outfitters, Anthropology dot Com, as well as Goop, Gwyneth Paltra's company. And with the launch of our new mineral sunscreen, which is totally proprietary, it's formula,
we're so excited to bring it to market. You know, this year is really focused on nurturing those relationships that we have and growing into more doors. So by April we'll be in about seven hundred doors. Oh my god, we are in April. What day is in two weeks, we'll be in seven hundred doors total, maybe a little over that number, and we are projecting the scale into most of those retailers.
Doors by the fall of this year.
So our focus is really on figuring out our best plan money wise to support our inventory. That also means maybe we're supporting our raise with debt or inventory financing, so we've been having conversations with those groups as well to best prepare for a huge amount of growth and push an inventory. It takes about three months on average to get a raw material in, so if you sell out as something you're screwed. You need a backup plan, you need inventory waiting on the ready and then in
the future. We have really exciting new category launches skin Tone Inclusive Beauty, rolling out more products within our Sport and Surf line. We're launching our first sport and surf product at the end of this month, which will be awesome. Hint hint, it's like a non aerosol spray with a higher SVF level. Yes Exclusive, also some fun stuff in
maybe the baby category. So you know, we've really worked hard at building this cachet around the brand early on by aligning with those high end specialty boutiques, grocers, you know, surf shops, hotel groups.
But we are planning to, as you know, be.
As accessible as possible, so that means rolling into accessible retailers to help support that mission.
With telling you too much, that's what's up.
I love it.
You know. I've actually worked in the consumer product industry for fourteen years, so I know exactly what it takes to launch these types of products when you have a big ass conglomerate company behind you, and y'all are doing this two woman show, very bootstrapped, very lean, and so I just want to give you all the flowers you deserve because this is no easy feat.
Thank you so much. You really appreciate that.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you so much for having such a joy. We loved it.
That was such an incredible conversation with Emily and May. First off, I'm like, I didn't even realize I needed clear sunscreen in my life, and now that I know that it exists, I can't go back.
How about you, Austin?
What stuck out to you most in this conversation?
You know, I think something that really resonated with me was when they were talking about keeping track of their income and expenses early on, and keeping those books super clean off the jump right. As a small business owner myself,
that's something I really struggled with. It was hard for me to project my cash flows, figure out when invoices were due, figuring out, you know, when I would collect on you know, from this vendor or whatever's going on, right, and so just keeping track of your income and expenses was just such a good takeaway from this. And something else kind of on top of that was what should
I spend money on? Emily specifically, she was talking a little bit about how should I hire this person to help me grow this or is this expense really right for my business? Or can you know, May and I do this ourselves. Can we kind of put our heads together and figure out a solution without spending thousands on a consultant or an agency or something of that nature. So really having that internal reflection and understanding what is right for the business, what's right for that long term
profitability projections. I just think those were the two biggest things for me. What about Eugenius what stood up for you?
Yeah? I think it was a good reminder that even though you're trying to enter a market that's quote unquote super sadatated. There's always an opportunity for you to differentiate yourself, and they saw the opportunity and built a community of really engaged consumers that are buying into their brand. Right, you might be thinking to yourself, well, who needs another
skincare brand? Who needs another sunscreen? And the fact is that they really did a great job in identifying how exclusive some of these brands have felt in the past, and the fact that they're being unapologetic in their approach, I think is why they've been able to stand out and see the success that they've had in such a short amount of time.
Yeah, and I think something that's also really interesting about this conversation is the power of direct messages.
Right.
She said that she got into Alta and Urban Outfitters because they sent her a DM. As a constant creator building my business, I know some my first customers came from just cold DM saying hey, here's the products I have. I've got this cool newsletter, like go check it out, right, Like, dms are so so powerful.
Yeah, They're not just for like sliding in and sending creepy messages.
You know, my.
First tweet to a magazine editor, led to my first media opportunity with Joqiro Dinetro and I actually launched my entire coaching business because I started getting dms on my Instagram stories from people who were like really interested in what I was talking about and were like, Hey, can you teach me how to do this? So you just never know the power of direct messaging somebody and seeing what opportunity you can come up.
I totally agree. And just to kind of wrap things up here, something that I've yet to really see other people do as well as them was the PR She mentioned, the Vogue, the Wall Street Journal, she mentioned Oprah's June list, Right, I don't even follow that, but I think that's what
it was. But I know that's a big deal. And maybe, you know, thinking back to what should we spend money on, what should we not spend money on, I'd imagine the let's spend money on a PR agency was a really good idea for their business.
Yeah. Absolutely, especially when you are focusing on having an impact across so many different channels. I think having that person whose job is just to find you those opportunities to stand out, that's one of the many reasons why we outsource as entrepreneurs because we just can't be doing all the things. And that's a really good reminder just to focus on those highest return on investment investments in your business.
I love it. Well, that's it for today's episode. You can find me on social media at Austin Hankwitz.
And you can find me at Jokiro dinetto podcast.
You can learn more about Emily and May by following at Dune Somencare on Instagram. You can follow Into It QuickBooks on all social media at QuickBooks, and to get tools you need to start, run and grow your business, head to QuickBooks dot com today.
We also want to hear from you, so be sure to leave a rating and review and join us Thursday, May twenty fifth, when we speak to Kristen Nino Deeguzman about transitioning to being a founder who learns how to outsource and delegate tasks.
This podcast is a production of iHeartRadio in Into It QuickBooks.
Our executive producer is Molly Soosha, our supervising producer is Nikia Swinton, and our writer is Tyree Rush.
Our head of post production is James Foster. See you next time in