240 | Bruises, Sweat, and Tears to Create a Product | with Shay Sim

Shay Sim  

It doesn't really matter what industry you're in. There's definitely going to be a lot of challenges. And I think people are really scared to stop in the middle of their tracks.

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 I'm welcoming to the show, Shay Sim. She is the co-founder of Viktor Michael.

Welcome to the show, Shay.

Shay Sim  

Thank you for having me

Chase Clymer  

Alrighty. So for the listeners that are unaware, Can you quickly talk about the types of products that you bring into the market today at Viktor Michael?

Shay Sim  

Absolutely. So Viktor Michael is a pre and post injection care line. It's specifically geared towards your Botox, your fillers, Sculptra... 

All the cosmetic injections that people now hear today here in the medical spa world.

Chase Clymer  

Awesome. So where did the idea for these products come from?

Shay Sim  

Absolutely. So Nadya and I, --which is the other co-founder of Viktor Michael-- we own a chain of medical spas here in the Northwest and we offer cosmetic injections. We've been doing this roughly for about 20 years between us. 

And we've owned our own medical spas for 13 years. And that is one treatment or one service that we offer: That there is no solution for downtime. 

So the number one excuse for customers when they come into our medical spas is how to arrange their schedules around cosmetic injections because of the bruising, the swelling, the tenderness... 

Whether they're hiding it from their husbands, their girlfriends, or they're getting ready for an event, a wedding or something, we're always scheduling around whatever's happening in these customers' lives. Well, I got injected myself. And we were sitting there thinking... 

I was in there thinking after I had my lips done, I was like, "Wow, there's nothing to heal swollen lips. They hurt, they're tender, I got bruises, I can't go to my kids baseball games.  I'm constantly just trying to cover something up with makeup." 

And I was talking to my partner. And I was like, "Hey, we really need to look into what can we do for post injections?" 

And [she] and I just sat at a table and we started brainstorming. 

And we're like, "Oh my gosh, we have this amazing idea. Let's turn it into something of cosmetics. Let's make this something available to all customers, not just the customer in a medical spa but somebody who can get this product, whether they're in a brick and mortar such as a Neimans and Nordstroms as well as a medical spa." 

So we know that this industry is growing. We know that cosmetic injections [have] been one of the number one categories in the beauty space that has grown exponentially. 

We're in a $17.4 billion industry in cosmetic injections alone. And to not have anything --like Chase, nothing for downtime other than an ice pack or Arnica-- has been our only solution for decades. 

So Viktor Michael is, in a sense, revolutionary.

Chase Clymer  

Oh, that's an amazing story. So talk me through how you went from the ideation of this. You're like, "There's gotta be something out there." To getting to kind of like the MVP of trial product number one. 

What did that look like? How do you guys jump in and try to just push it forward?

Shay Sim  

Absolutely. So medical spas, we know like the back of our hands. Developing a product and trying to go retail is something very foreign. That... 

What we did was we started working with ingredients, first of all, that we know our tried and true. In our complex [ingredient list] that's patent pending includes Arnica, Bromelain, Dragon's Blood, and Poppy Seed Oil. 

4 ingredients that are already well-known and established for wound healing, anti-bruising, inflammatory properties, anything to do with healing and tenderness. 

So we knew already that those were the 4 ingredients that we needed to go to market with. What we did was we started experimenting at home and we started creating different products. 

And we were playing with them and we noticed that it started making an impact on our downtime. We knew at that moment, we really need to take this powerful solution that we created on our own to the next step. 

We contacted some chemists. Not all chemists are the same which was a really big eye opener. So that took a little bit more digging and researching. 

We ended up landing in the hands of an amazing, amazing chemist out of California, who specializes in natural ingredients as well as cosmetics. And we made an appointment to go pitch her. 

And she was just amazed. She was actually really intrigued with the idea. She was like, "Wow, there's nothing out there in the market. You guys really have something." She was like, "I'd love to take this project on." 

So it took us quite a few years actually [to get] the formulations. One because we're perfectionists and we probably drove her absolutely crazy. 

Every single submission that we had, what we did was an in-house training or an in-house clinical research of our own. 

We would do 3 weeks of every single submission and we'd get somebody injected --whether it was ourselves, our clients, staff-- we'd get them to treat and then we'd have them use the product. 

And we were just writing down or writing down "What was the downtime like? What was this one like?" Pictures every single day. What could we improve on? Texture, smell, scent? So we go back to the drawing board. 

And she's like, "You know, usually we only have 3 to 4 submissions to come back to us. We really got to nail this." And what was interesting is we nailed our serum right away. They were able to really make this beautiful serum. It absorbed into the skin, it had a really nice silky texture, a beautiful scent... 

But it was the efficacy. We had to come to market with something that was going to be so strong and powerful that wasn't out there. 

[It] was the next competitor to Arnica gel that you can get at Rite Aid for $7. So we kept experimenting. We're like "We have to push the limits on this Arnica. We got the Arnica up to 15% in our serum." 

And we did some studies that up to 20%, you can really start to elevate the healing with Arnica. 

So without compromising the product 15% was about the max that we could get it to without really just compromising the smell and everything else that came along with a raw ingredient. So that took about 6 submissions, over about a 2 to 3 year span. And the mask... 

The second SKU that we have is a mask, that took, gosh, 12 to 15 submissions. And that was more of again, efficacy, texture, how to get these raw ingredients to be as active as they are in something of a mask texture and not falling apart. 

So let's just say it was years and years of trials and errors and a lot of injections, a lot of bruises, swelling... 

Our injectors, we would come to the doctors in our clinics and say "We need bruises. I need you to bruise me." And they were like "No, we're not gonna bruise you." We're like "We need bruises." 

So it was a lot of fun.

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Chase Clymer  

How long would you say yours was between concept and the final go-to-market version 1.0 of the product?

Shay Sim  

So we started in 2017. The lab probably started around the end of 2017. We were just about to launch [when] COVID hit so we all took a huge backseat to launching there. 

And then things just got wonky with the medical spas, and reopening, and trying to get back to normal there. So we did not launch until the end of January of 2023. 

So we have a good, what, 5 - 6 year span in between concepts to launch, which was...

Chase Clymer  

Absolutely 

Shay Sim  

...difficult.

Chase Clymer  

Yeah, so you finally get to launch this product at the beginning of this year. You obviously have a bit of an edge, because you have your brick-and-mortar, you have your built-in clientele. 

But obviously there's this direct-to-consumer play as well. So how did you go out and get customers outside of the ones that you already had from your brick-and-mortar?

Shay Sim  

So that has been the most challenging. And this is... We all love a really nice challenge, especially in this entrepreneurial world. Our strategy was we are going to go direct-to-consumer. 

We're gonna conquer Google, we're going to conquer Meta, and this is going to be so easy because this concept is brilliant, and that failed. 

So [interestingly] enough, we got on Meta and Meta was working, and it was going. We were getting some sales here or there about every week. And we definitely had a larger platform. 

We went after injectors, we were going after other medical spas, we were going after that consumer who's looking up injections, etc. We also had our followers from Kucumber that we were able to go after as well and drive them to our website. 

Google, on the other hand, was another interesting situation. Somehow we totally... 

I don't know how this happened. But we got locked out of Google for almost 4 months. So we didn't have a Google account active until the end of May. And that was our entire strategy was to get on to Google. So that puts a huge  damper in our strategies. 

So we launched on Google. And then we finally realized "Holy crap, Google isn't as exciting as we thought it was." You need a lot of money, a lot of budget, a lot of testing, and we weren't really getting anywhere. And so we started consulting with different companies. 

We ended up letting go of the company we worked with. It just wasn't a match. And, there were a lot of questions. 

We kept asking a lot of questions and I don't think they like us asking a lot of questions. So what we decided to do in June is we stopped. And I know I'm going into another question, but that was... 

We stopped the Ecommerce train as far as Google goes, so I'll leave it at that.

Chase Clymer  

Absolutely. It leads into my follow up here. There's kind of a reason why you stopped it. You guys announced something not too long ago that's gonna hopefully position you guys to do a lot better especially on the E commerce front. Could you share a bit more about that? 

Shay Sim  

Yeah. So we ended up... 

Viktor Michael ended up being chosen as 1 of 3 companies to be mentored by True Beauty Ventures. And True Beauty Ventures is owned by some investors that are known in the beauty industry, who are really well-known. 

Some huge trailblazers that are known to take smaller companies making segways in this industry of turning a brand into a household name. 

So we get to work with them for 7 months, they get to analyze our strategy, our plan, give us the direction we should go to, and pretty much how to really conquer I would say D2C because that's where they are really well known. 

So we're super, super excited to be working with people that actually know the space and that are gonna take us to the next level.

Chase Clymer  

That's very exciting. Now, is there anything I didn't ask you about today that you think would resonate with our audience?

Shay Sim  

I think just from speaking to new founders, it doesn't really matter what industry you're in, there's definitely going to be a lot of challenges. 

And I think people are really scared to stop in the middle of their tracks. And us making that decision in June, even though we just started soft launching, was probably the best decision that Nadya and myself could have made. 

We were able to take a step back, re-analyze what our strategy is moving forward, how to really conquer Ecommerce in a very productive way, and how to scale slowly, and not waste money, and just do a little bit more digging in the industry on who to partner with and what expectations are, and really setting a budget. "2 to 3 years out, what are we really trying to achieve on the DTC channel?" and then go backwards. 

So at first, we were really nervous like, "Oh, we can't stop. We have to show sales. We got to show revenue." 

And if we would have done that, we would have blown right through our budget and we wouldn't have a brand. 

And I think, by just making that decision, and pivoting in the middle of something so huge while the spotlight is on Viktor Michael, and all these different media outlets, it was so crucial to the business. And I think that that's what's gonna get us pretty far. 

And I would suggest that to any founder, to not be scared to just stop if they need to

Chase Clymer  

I couldn't agree more. Pivoting is what makes the great businesses even greater. Obviously we stopped with the media spin, but the website is still up and running. 

So if I'm a listener, and I'm actually curious about the product, where should I go?

Shay Sim  

www.viktormicheal.com. Absolutely. We're also in medical spas. And we are also launched now in Shen Beauty in Brooklyn, New York. We also are on modaoperandi.com. 

So you can purchase products through them. And we are working with another retail chain that has just been solidified. So we'll also be in a couple other department stores coming soon. And we haven't… 

We're not going away from Ecommerce. We had just partnered now with somebody who we believe is going to be an integral part. 

And we're gonna go slow, and we're gonna test the waters, and try to pivot that way.

Chase Clymer  

Awesome. Shay, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Shay Sim  

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

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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Lastly, if you're a store owner looking for an amazing partner to help get your Shopify store to the next level, reach out to Electric Eye at electriceye.io/connect.

Until next time!