230 | Don’t Be Scared of Growing Fast | with David Gaylord

David Gaylord  

When problems came up, we just figured them out at the time versus being too scared to grow fast.

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. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And today we're welcoming to the show, David Gaylord. 

David is the CEO of Bushbalm Skincare, the leader in bikini line skin care products. 

Welcome to the show, David.

David Gaylord  

Yeah, nice to be here. 

Super excited.

Chase Clymer  

Awesome. So let's just dive in a little bit more at the top here about the actual products. 

Just let people know what are these bikini line skin care products? 

What are you guys actually selling?

David Gaylord  

Yeah, so we started originally as products that you would need to freshen up down there. And that quickly turned into what people seemingly cared about. 

So that was ingrown hairs, razor burn, and post waxing. 

So right now we have a full suite of products that are solely focused on those concerns. And we see them as probably concerns that the rest of the industry sees as too small. But we actually see them as massive areas to focus on. 

And we always call it these "macro niches" where people see them as super niche and small --like razor burn sounds small-- but when you pull back the covers, it's actually like... 

I think 85% of women shave their pubic region on a regular basis. So it's actually a huge, huge market that a lot of companies don't go after because it's a bit taboo.

Chase Clymer  

Absolutely. So take me back in time. Where did you stumble across this idea?

David Gaylord  

Yeah. So it was actually my business partner and his wife, Tim and Mel. 

So they were on their honeymoon. And Tim uses beard oil to freshen up and Mel just loved his beard oil. And it just led to this conversation that's probably too much info for most podcasts. 

But they talked on their honeymoon the whole time about this concept. “Why isn't there skincare for down there? Why isn't there anything for men to rival baby powder?..” All these different concepts. 

And they actually came up with the name on the honeymoon. And they said it was just this thing that [they] couldn't stop talking about. And then I worked with Tim at Shopify. 

So we were there together [for] about 6 or 7 years. And he brought the idea back to a work event and everyone else thought it was hilarious and funny. And this was 2016. So the business was far ahead of the norms in society. 

And I thought "This is awesome." And my background was marketing. I went to university for [it] but while I was at Shopify, [I] was in much more of a corporate role so I didn't actually have a chance to do marketing. 

So this was my chance to really step in and do a lot of marketing, and learn Facebook ads, and anything digital. 

Tim did a lot of the supply chain operation. And then Mel was a graphic designer. So she really formulated the brand in the early days.

Chase Clymer  

Awesome. So tell me... Walk me through it. How did you guys go from this idea to an actual product?

David Gaylord  

Yeah, so we took a simple approach, the brand is actually called Bushbalm. And if you think about a balm as a product, that was what we originally wanted to do. 

But balms are actually much more difficult as far as testing, stability, everything you have to go through. Whereas... 

We started with oils. And oils at the time... 

It was a lot easier to get smaller quantities, smaller runs. So  we actually found a manufacturer and went that route to start. And it was actually quite straightforward to start. 

Whereas if we went with a different type of product, it would be really complex. And we started, yeah, with a tiny assortment of products. 

And we had a free Shopify store and we worked there. So in the early days, it was low, low risk. 

And we're really doing it [for the] first 3 years just to see if there was a market for the product. 

And it really did take us about 2 to 3 years to actually find product-market fit

Chase Clymer  

Awesome. Can you talk a bit about that? How did you validate this idea? How did you stumble onto product-market fit?

David Gaylord  

Yeah, I think the best thing you can ever do is talk to people. So we actually did an Etsy-like in-person event. 

And people were there in our little booth and [our] products and we actually used it to test the language. 

So people didn't want what we called "bush oil" at the time. And then when we moved to "pubic hair oil", people didn't want that either. 

And then when we moved it down to "bikini line skincare", people actually understood it and thought it was cool. 

Whereas if you use the other words --and razor burn doesn't sound cool-- but bikini line skin care is pretty aspirational. 

So that language is what we moved the website [and] everything to. And it really did hit.

Chase Clymer  

And so you said that you were building this while still working at Shopify? When did it feel like it was okay to dive full-time?

David Gaylord  

It took a long time, to be honest. So we had pretty good gigs at Shopify. We loved it there. [We were] having a lot of fun. And the big piece with the business [was] we actually hired a full time employee before we quit our jobs. 

So we had one staff at one point. And to be honest, we actually got to about $2 million in revenue before we hired anyone or quit our jobs. So we ran it as like a straight side business. We were... 

I was putting in tons of work on the side, just because I love the Facebook ads side of it, the marketing side. But at the same time, we were scrambling to make it work. And then we got about 4 or 5 employees before I quit. 

So I quit [in the] middle of the pandemic, just because the business at that point was doing really, really well. And it's been awesome since. 

And the experience I have with Shopify was unbelievably helpful, just to be able to understand like "How does a big, big company run? How do you organize your teams, your structures, all those things?" 

And then yeah, gonna get the fun aspects of a smaller business.

Chase Clymer  

Absolutely. Now I feel special that I'm talking to the actual person that was running the Facebook ads trying to break this brand online. 

So what can you share with the audience about how you made that work? 

It's definitely a tough thing to do, especially doing it so recently where it's not as easy to run a profitable paid ad campaign these days.

David Gaylord  

Yeah. So it's, we started running Facebook ads in about 2017, I would say. So if you go back to the period of 2017 - 2021, probably, it was fairly easy, actually. Pretty straightforward.

We ran a lot of creative testing. And we actually found someone who was at a brand that was doing probably about $20 million in revenue at the time and he was running Facebook ads for them and he was a full time employee there. 

So this was an extra side hustle for him to work with us. And he helped us scale a lot. And we ran so many different variations of testing. 

And he was optimizing the account at all times. And then we actually brought him on full-time. And how I would describe it now is, we still do so much on the Facebook front and TikTok. And now it's really a content engine.

And for us, we're pumping out  unbelievable amounts of creative, but also unbelievable amounts of influencer content that we're whitelisting all the time. 

And if this system breaks down in any way like we know and we're flagged early, we can't stop the cycle of getting new content, because we just know things run out quicker than ever. 

Whereas back in the day, you could run something maybe a month and you'd get great results. Whereas now we've built everything internally to build this system that runs all of our paid media versus…

 [At] Bushbalm, yeah, we almost have no part of our marketing team that's outsourced.

Chase Clymer  

Absolutely. Can you take me back in time, though, to when you are... 

You're getting that product-market fit. When did you guys start to lean a little more heavily into paid? 

And then can you share anything about what budgets looked like back then trying to get to that next level?

David Gaylord  

Yeah. The budgets changed at every point in time. So when we first started, it was, hey, $20 a day running. Every time I'd say, "Oh wow, this is working well." 

And we started to do pretty interesting creative. And then we... I don't know if others were late to the game or if we were just early. 

But since day one, we're running Facebook ads. We also made landing pages. 

We've had landing pages running since 2017 and they've iterated forever. But yeah, we basically went from $20 a day and got a return, to $30, $50, $100 bucks. 

I remember being up to, I don't know, $2,000 or $3,000 a day easily and still working at Shopify full-time. My personal credit card limit got... 

I think it's up to $60,000 or $100,000 now somehow. And then we got a business account. But yeah, we ran it up and easily getting up into the $15,000... $10,000 - $15,000 range a day on paid media. 

And if you have a lot of data like us and a good email marketing system throughout it, it really helps. But starting out today is... 

I couldn't imagine how much more difficult it would be than when we started. And we were probably late to the game as well.

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Chase Clymer  

Now, is there anything I didn't ask you about in that scaling phase that you think would resonate with our audience?

David Gaylord  

Yeah, I think that the scaling phase is just incredibly difficult. Breaking down barriers. 

So for us at one point, I was doing the paid ads and I was also the shipping person. So all of a sudden, the more I sold, the more I had to ship.

And then we found a 3PL and all of a sudden, we unlocked all kinds of scales. Same thing happened to customer service. 

We scaled a lot. It became unmanageable. We hired someone, it changed the game, and maybe we could keep scaling. 

So yeah, I find in the early days, people are thinking about what problems are gonna happen. Whereas we actually just didn't care and we just ran the business. 

And whenever a problem happened, we would go, "Oh, wow, we got to figure out this new problem." Versus... 

It's super easy to say, "Oh, what would we ever do if we ever had 50 tickets? Would we be able to hire someone, and you can talk all about it?" 

Versus just like, if you ever get there worry about it, then. So yeah, we were just guns blazing and having fun. 

And when problems came up, we just figured them out at the time versus being too scared to grow fast.

Chase Clymer  

Absolutely. Now, you guys have started expanding into a new channel, getting into physical locations. When did that become something that you guys wanted to invest your time and energy in?

David Gaylord  

Yeah, it would have been right in the middle of a pandemic. We saw a lot of traction with waxing salons. They love Bushbalm. We have... 

Honestly, we have way better product-market fit there than anywhere. So that channel for us naturally just grew. And they were reaching out to us. 

So in the middle of the pandemic, the world was saying how Ecommerce was the best and like investors we talked to would say, "Oh, why are you focusing on retail? That seems like a waste of your time." 

And what we were thinking was, "We should probably diversify a little bit." So we added Amazon to the mix at that time. 

And then we also started to focus a little bit on waxing salons, as well as reaching out to major retailers. 

So for us at the time, we saw it as this way to expand and then also a way to hedge our bets. So if one channel goes down and up, we have the opportunity to make it up on a different channel. 

And yeah, in 2023, people, the new narrative is Ecommerce isn't as big as it was. It's never going to be the same. 

So everyone we talked to now values our retail revenue and our waxing salon revenue more than our D2C revenue. But I think it's all about your strategy in where you go. 

But yeah, we've got a pretty... 

I think less than 50% of our business now is direct-to-consumer.

Chase Clymer  

And how long did that shift take? It was 100% before the pandemic, and now it's 50-50?

David Gaylord  

Yeah, it was probably like 95% 2 years ago. Last year was probably 75%. And this year now it's like 50%.

Chase Clymer  

And now... And that's not cannibalizing anything from your other market shares?

David Gaylord  

No, no, yeah. We're seeing sales kind of increase across the board, which is awesome. Just they're increasing at rates way beyond what Ecommerce is growing at for us. 

So our waxing salon business is growing at something like 300% a year. So it's a lot different. 

And then retail went from zero to a pretty big number, in a matter of 3 months.

Chase Clymer  

Absolutely. David, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show today. 

Now, if someone's listening to this and they're actually interested/curious about the product, where should they go to check it out?

David Gaylord  

Yeah, I guess it depends where you are. So for us, the one thing that's beautiful though being in waxing salons is [that] waxing salons are in every city, every town, and every small town. There's a waxing salon all over the US. 

We're in Ulta Beauty now, which is in about 1000 stores nationwide. And those stores are generally in larger city centers. 

So if you go on our website, you can buy there of course. But also if you want to buy local and support a local business, we're sold in over 2000 waxing salons across the country. 

And it's actually shocking if you put in your address, I bet there's probably one that's within 10 - 15 miles, no doubt.

Chase Clymer  

Awesome. David, thank you so much.

David Gaylord  

Right on. Thank you.

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!