315 | Building a Lasting Ecommerce Brand | with Heather Florio

Heather Florio

The more informed our consumers are going to be, the more that companies need to adhere to those ethics, because like you said, in the short term, you might get some extra revenue, but in the long term, you're going to fail. 

Chase Clymer

Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game.

On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating real results. I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business. Let's get on with the show. 

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today, I'm welcoming to the show Heather Florio, the second generation owner and CEO of Desert Harvest.

She leads the company over there, innovating sustainable solutions in pelvic and sexual health. Heather, welcome to the show. 

Heather Florio

Hi, thanks, Chase, for having me. I appreciate it. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. So quickly, what are the types of products we're talking about that you guys are selling over there? 

Heather Florio

We have a variety of different pelvic and sexual health tools from supplements, skincare related products, vaginal health tools, even anal health tools. We have a variety of different products related to pelvic and sexual health wellness specifically. 

Chase Clymer

I love it. Very niche. So typically, I ask people, where the idea for this business comes from. But you've been around as long as it's been around. I guess just take me back in time. Where do we want to start this conversation? 

Heather Florio

Let's go backwards to 1993 and the beginnings of the internet and Ecommerce. We were really at that time searching. My aunt had bladder disorder, interstitial cystitis, which is one of our key products currently undergoing FDA drug trials for right now because we have an 87.5% response rate of summer complete relief of all symptoms, which is taking our capsules. 

We kind of started Desert Harvest. We were looking for options for my aunt. Treatment options, things like that. Couldn't find anything, nothing existed. Many clinicians back in the day, in the 90s, it wasn't even considered a condition, it was all in your head. 

It didn't really exist. So we, my aunt and my mother went to some random natural products conference, picked up some random bottle of aloe vera, which you typically find in the health food stores, which is not what we make.

But she slept through the whole night. My mother, it was immediately like, how can we concentrate this? How can we make this safe for long-term use? Because there are definitely carcinogenic compounds naturally in aloe vera. What you see in the health food stores is meant for short-term use and digestive aids. My mother was able to get with a chemist friend and develop the formulation that we still use to this day.

Chase Clymer

That was the flagship product? 

Heather Florio

Yes, that was the flagship product that started Desert Harvest in 1993. Ecommerce was just starting. We've grown with Ecommerce over the past 31 years.

Chase Clymer 

Now, what was your role in the company back then? Or were you just around? 

Heather Florio

I was just everywhere. I was in high school. At the end of my high school years, I did whatever was thrown at me essentially so that I could have money to have a car and a life and everything a teenager wants. But it was only as hard as I worked that I could have anything. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. That's the small business thing is just like there are jobs to be done.  Whatever your title is, it doesn't matter. 

Heather Florio

No. Yeah. I always say that. Even for employees now it is really interesting. I was reading an article by the founder of Epic, the healthcare management systems. She was saying, I let all my employees pick their titles. I was like, wait, that's what I do. I'm all like, hey, you create your title. You're doing the job. You're doing the position.

We are still considered a smaller family company. For us, it's all about everybody finding their niche where they fit. My kids have probably been working here themselves since birth and now they're in their mid to late 20s and married and often doing their own things. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. All right. Talk to me about the early days of the internet. Now, was it always like the internet first direct to the consumer? That was the model? 

Heather Florio

Yes. Early on, it was very important for my mother. For me, I grew up in this environment. My mother already had a successful business. She had started a secretarial service in 1980 and had grown that to being the top career expert in the United States writing for the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, New York Times, speaking at career universities all over the country. 

I had this entire model. We had typewriters and then we had Selectric typewriters and then we had the first computers in the 80s. In my home, technology always existed because of my mother's profession. 

As a result, I think it was only natural. Ecommerce was starting to become a thing. This is when Google didn't exist. You're trying to decide like Amazon didn't exist and Ecomm is going to be the next great thing. There were websites, right and left coming out at that time. 

In my generation, I'm in high school and at that point, everybody is being pushed into college careers related to IT and technology. This is where you're going to make your money. This is going to be the latest and greatest thing. I think for that reason, because my mother was always on top of technological advances, that it just was naturally the platform that we decided to start with. 

Chase Clymer

That's awesome.

Google didn't exist. Amazon didn't exist. I don't even think paid ads were a thing back then. What was marketing like pre-Google? 

Heather Florio

So interesting. We had the threads, the message boards. This is where all of a sudden, patients got on and they started talking and they still continue today on Facebook a lot and on Reddit and things like that. 

Especially when your condition is underrepresented, under researched, underfunded, as a result, these women have very little resources. It's predominantly women, there are men, it's about 75% women, 25% men for interstitial cystitis. 

So as a result, we started on these like message boards, answering questions, and providing details. We started in 1993 and then we did our first medical study in 1995 and we partnered with the Interstitial Societist Association, the only nonprofit organization specifically related to interstitial societies research. 

They were early on in their foundations and so were we too, so we really kind of worked together to further interstitial cystitis as a condition, as something that needed to be researched. The Interstitial Cystitis Association was the first to get it recognized as a disability by the federal government. 

So many things evolved, including pelvic health. That's where pelvic health really came in for us is this because pelvic floor physical therapy really started to become a discipline that clinicians were slowly starting to recognize in the 90s. But by the 2000s, we had a conference, the International Pelvic Pain Society. We can remember there were like 75 people at their first conference. Now they have 1,500 or more at that conference.

Chase Clymer

Oh, yeah. How things have changed in 30 years is mind-blowing. Do you know the answer to this question? How many versions of your website do you think you've had? 

Heather Florio

Oh my goodness. Oh, okay. So probably, I have done 3 alone since 2012. Prior to that, interestingly enough, my mom probably only did two or three herself iterations. It was really important to me when we took over, where when I took over, it would really become like, it still looked like a website from the 90s. It was very important to me from a visual perspective to really bring that forward. 

I think that there was a gap of generational transition where my knowledge, being in school, being in college and other things like that, and then having a different life growing up with technology than my mother, let's say, had. I think that there was a limit. 

Even now, my oldest son works here at Desert Harvest now. He's really starting to help me take over things on the day to day. And same thing, I can see the generational gap between him and I and the ideas he has and things and he'll take it to a whole other level than I will be able to. 

Chase Clymer

So I guess the question I have is just the early stages of the internet. Did the first version of the website. Could you buy it online or was it like, you call this number? How did that work? 

Heather Florio

Yeah. So no. Initially, it had to be done over the phone. We had a merchant account. They had to run through the merchant account. We literally went from sliding credit card machines type things where we had to and we had to put everything down on paper.

There was no CRM system. We were using databases to be able to manage data and everything, when you're starting with the internet back then, you've got a dial-up, you've got a dot matrix. 

You're literally like to get to the back end of the website, to get to anything. You don't have a Shopify platform or things built. You're using very advanced software with coding that is having to build each section for you. Then I think our very first shopping cart was called and I think they still exist today. I think it was called Squirrel Cart.

Chase Clymer

Yeah. I know about that Ecommerce. Back then, it was almost custom to a sense where nothing like today, as far as just the availability of off-the-shelf solutions. Maybe a question there would be a statement you can make is just like how much easier it is to be an entrepreneur these days online. 

Heather Florio

Oh, yes. You could just pick it up and do it in a second, not back then. You really had to have or know someone who had the technological expertise to be able to use the software that they were building that would help you build. I forgot the complex one. It was in Adobe software. I don't even think it exists anymore.

But it was a way to build and it was the most complex thing. I struggled with that software and I still don't even know it to this day. 

Chase Clymer

I'm going to venture a guess. It was either Dreamweaver or Firefox. 

Heather Florio

Dreamweaver. Yeah. There you go. 

Chase Clymer

That was my first foray into the web development world. It should have been my last but here I am.

Heather Florio

Yeah, and see, when we first started, it was just literally coding on the back end of DOS Matrix. Then we got Dreamweaver and that made it a little bit easier, but then we had to find someone who knew how to use the Dreamweaver software. We could only do so much with it. Then when it got more advanced, we had to take it a step further. 

Now you literally just go online, Shopify plug-in, or similar website template type things. The Ecommerce shopping cart experience is already built into the package. You just sign up, you put in some details, you put up a logo and you've got an Ecom business. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. Now obviously, there's a lot to cover in 30 years. Is there anything like in that time before we get to what's going on now? What do you think is worth bringing up? 

Heather Florio

Really, the only things that have changed, obviously, are regulatory over the years. Regulatory compliance of course, in 1993, nothing existed. Watching the evolution of the regulatory landscape, the PCI compliance and ICANN and things like these, those didn't exist. 

When they did come to exist, there was nobody to help you figure that out. So I definitely became a researcher. 

Chase Clyner

A lot of people take that stuff for granted these days. Because a platform like Shop, it just takes care of all that stuff for you. You just basically got to get a bank account. Depending on what product you want to sell, maybe you need to get something that isn't available. You can't sell certain products, vice products, or certain pharmaceuticals on shop pay. You need to get a different merchant account. That's a little bit more difficult. But other than that, it's just like you said, plug and play. 

Heather Florio

Yeah. Pretty much. You can even use Shopify platforms for CBD products, things like that that have a regulatory gray area, things like that. I mean, the advancements have come a long way.

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Chase Clymer

Let's talk about now. Obviously, I'm assuming you're doing a little bit more marketing and advertising these days as opposed to just hopping into forums and chatting one on one with potential customers and helping them. What's the typical marketing plan look like for a business like Desert Harvest? 

Heather Florio

So for Desert Harvest, we're working a lot with doctors directly all over the world. We do some email marketing, things like that, social media marketing, kind of the standard pieces that are available out there. 

But then we go into SEO, PPC, and that becomes a whole other beast. It was actually great for us to watch the evolution of SEO. Because we were such an early on website, our SEO has always ranked us. When you search for Desert Harvest, it's going to be the first thing that comes up. 

You search for aloe vera. We're going to be on that first page. 

It's really about guiding that SEO strategy. But now we're on a whole new level because our SEO strategy, which I'm actually working on right now, is completely changing because of AI and changing how the marketing, we're not just going to do PPC. We're not just going to do email and social media marketing. We're going to have to look at how AI drives people to us and how AI is functioning on our website, targeting and driving customers to new options. 

Chase Clymer

You know what's wild is we have gotten a handful, maybe even like a dozen people have scheduled calls with our agency because ChatGPT told them to. I think that’s something that's going to be on the horizon. Careers are going to be built upon this idea of AI optimization or whatever SEO is, but for these larger AI platforms, which let's be real. ChatGPT is the biggest and most adopted one. 

Heather Florio

Yeah. I mean that the algorithms are completely different than if we're looking at targeting via SEO. It's a completely different algorithm that we have to look at when it comes to AI and how to target that AI so that when you get that response, it's going to include desert harvest. 

Chase Clymer

What's your thoughts on this? It's so funny that we started here, do you think that the fundamentals of marketing and advertising have really changed much in the last 30 or 50 years? 

Heck, since marketing was technically invented by Coca-Cola, because the way that you started the business and found your first customers is the same basic story I've heard dozens of times. 

You used these forums and the people, more modern brands have been using the Facebook groups, just finding their people and talking to them and doing the work that doesn't scale. Please correct me if I'm wrong or put your own spin on this. But I think these days, it's the same tactics with new ways to do it, new technology or new tools. 

Heather Florio

It really is. The only thing that has evolved is the customers. Realistically, the tools, especially since the early 2000s, have just evolved, but they're still the same tools. I think that since the birth of the internet, we've been watching the same way. We're watching email marketing and cold calling marketing.

All of that going out the window, as the internet evolved and Ecommerce evolved in the 90s. Then you see this exact same trajectory throughout the entire 2000s. The thing that you do see that completely starts to change is the consumer. The one thing is we've got Dr. Google. 

They become so informed.

but sometimes so informed to their own detriment. It's that plethora of information that you have got to educate your consumer. You can't just sell a product like Fruit Loops and this red dye number three being banned yesterday and things like that.

You can't just follow the tried and true methods of, hey, I've built this brand, everybody loves Froot Loops, I'm gonna buy Froot Loops forever and this is what we're gonna do. 

You can't, you have to change and adapt. I always say you have to adapt or die. Our consumers are becoming much more informed about what they're putting in their bodies, about how they're taking care of their bodies.

No matter what you have technologically, even technology, when we look, we know that a lot of the time the quality of maybe the TV that we get at Costco versus the quality of the TV we get at Bus Buy, there might be a difference. That's why you have such a difference in price and things like that. 

As consumers, we're learning the ways in which people are trying to become more informed about your methodologies. If you're using underhanded tactics or doing things to cheapen your product, to create more revenue and capitalize on your consumer base, that's going to become harder to do. I think AI is going to make that even harder.

Because versus having to search through mounds of data on the internet, it's going to bring it all right up there for you and then you can decide based on that information what to do. But then you for us, one of the big things is like, aloe vera naturally has oxalate in it. If you Google oxalate, you're going to know, aloe vera is part of a high oxalate diet.

But then for us, we have to then turn around and educate our consumers, not our product, not the way that we process it, not what we do. It now becomes a part of a low oxalate diet and things like that. So that's just an example of how we have to also combat misinformation that comes out on the internet or something that leads you down a rabbit hole. You could look up any condition and it leads to cancer, you know.

It's that kind of thing. So making sure that had different ways to inform your consumers around what AI might be bringing it up. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. Yeah. I think there's two things that you mentioned that I wanted to touch on. It's that education piece. It's marketing 101 and once you get that consumer to that trust phase, they're more than likely going to make a purchase.

Then the other thing is with AI, and you mentioned underhanded tactics to make short-term gains. Anytime you make a shortcut, maybe you'll make a little bit more money, but it's not sustainable and it's maybe at the detriment of your business. 

Heather Florio

Yes, very much so. I have seen it time and time again with companies over 31 years where they have done one thing to cheapen or the processing for our Aloe Vera has not changed in over 31 years. 

There is a reason. We know that it works. We know that it's effective. We are not going to cheapen our brand or cheapen what we do. For us, it's always been about the consumer meeting the unmet needs of our consumers and bringing out the best product possible that should go in their bodies. I think that the more informed our consumers are going to be, the more that companies need to adhere to those ethics, because like you said, in the short term, you might get some extra revenue, but in the long term, you're going to fail. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely, Heather. It's been wonderful talking to you. Now, is there anything I didn't ask you about that you think would resonate with our audience? 

Heather Florio

Finding your connection, your connection story, your connection to your consumers. We can throw out Ecommerce businesses all day, every day, whether it's on Amazon, whether it's on Shopify, whether it's creating your own website. But if you don't create that connection and a reason for your customers to connect with you and trust you, then you'll just be another fading story. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. Now if people are curious about the brand, curious about the products, where should they go? What should they do? 

Heather Florio

They can visit our website at desertharvest.com. We are also on Instagram, same with Facebook. All social. Definitely check us out. And if you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out at any time. Even always call us at 800-222-3901. 

Chase Clymer

Awesome, Heather. I think you might be the first person to drop a 1-800 number on the podcast. Look at me going old school. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show. 

Heather Florio

All right. Thanks, Chase. 

Chase Clymer

We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes. 

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Until next time!