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Honest Ecommerce podcast episode - 246 | Keep Pushing Toward A Breakthrough | with Bani Bahari and Jonathan Lawrence
Oct 9, 20232 min read

246 | Keep Pushing Toward A Breakthrough | with Bani Bahari and Jonathan Lawrence

Bani Bahari is co-founder and CEO of OffCourt. She has spent the last 10 years in retail and beauty - in her past life she was a strategy consultant at Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and Glossier.

She comes from a family business in beauty. At OffCourt, she does all product development and operations.

Jonathan is a co-founder of OffCourt - he comes from management consulting background and real estate development and finance.

At OffCourt, he is in charge of finance, strategy and branding.

In This Conversation We Discuss:

  • [01:11] Intro
  • [01:53] The idea behind OffCourt
  • [02:22] Testing the waters and taking risks
  • [04:11] Establishing OffCourt’s branding
  • [04:33] Prioritizing product development
  • [05:19] Finding people to work with
  • [06:03] Social media presence for a new business
  • [06:28] Tying in with manufacturers early on
  • [06:53] Venturing the market of fragrances
  • [07:27] Importance of communication as a team
  • [08:08] Launching products and managing expectations
  • [08:34] The power of PR for a new business
  • [09:46] The pressure of being new to the business
  • [11:10] Success takes time and consistent efforts
  • [12:54] Raising money and self-funding as a start
  • [18:55] Testing out different PR strategies
  • [19:48] Knowing when and how much to invest in marketing
  • [20:43] Using customer’s touch points to sell your products
  • [22:36] Finalizing things and reaching out to retailers
  • [23:45] Pushing through to land a breakthrough
  • [24:32] Facing the ambiguity of retailer’s conditions
  • [26:50] Business don’t always go as planned
  • [27:32] Having different mindsets in different situations
  • [28:51] Keeping an open mind after every rejection
  • [29:20] The importance of finding a good rep firm
  • [30:40] Having the conviction to change plans when needed
  • [30:53] Where to check out OffCourt
  • [31:09] Discount code: honestcommerce15

Resources:

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Transcript

Jonathan Lawrence  

When we really look at people in our industry who are successful, you start seeing headline numbers. This company sells for $350 million, you look, oh, they were founded 14 years ago. 

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.

Chase Clymer   

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. 

Today, I'm bringing to you, not one but two, co-founders of OffCourt. They're making personal care products for active people. 

Welcome to the show, Jonathan and Bani. 

Bani Bahari

Thank you so much for having us.

Jonathan Lawrence  

Yeah. Thanks, Chase. Excited to be here. 

Chase Clymer

I'm excited to chat. It's not often we have co-founders on the show, but also husband and wife. This is going to be a great episode. Let's dive in though. 

So talk about quickly, OffCourt, what are the types of products that you're actually bringing to market? What are you guys selling right now? 

Bani Bahari

We sell body products. So deodorants, spray, soaps, body washes, face moisturizer. And we recently launched our fine fragrances.

Chase Clymer  

Awesome. Awesome. So take me back in time. 

Where did the idea for this product come from? What was going on? 

Bani Bahari

Yeah. The idea came in 2018. I was at Columbia Business School doing an MBA and looking for a class project. 

Prior to that, I was a consultant in retail. So I was looking into retail space. 

At the time, I was also working at Glossier, which in 2018-17, it was really growing very fast. The whole direct to consumer was a very, very big thing.

And Jon and I brainstormed and came up with the idea of products for people who sweat and take multiple showers a day with a focus on fragrances. 

But doing all of that in the affordable pricing range rather than products that are $40, $50, $60. 

Chase Clymer  

Awesome. It sounds like a great idea. 

How did you validate this idea? How did you make sure that there were actually people willing to buy it? 

Bani Bahari  

So from day one, I mean, I guess...At the beginning, we interviewed about, I was at school, I had free time and access to people. 

And we interviewed about two to 300 people on what they use, how they use it, what they think about the category, just really just understanding consumer expectation and perception, how they make shopping, where do they shop from. 

But I think Jon and I fundamentally, maybe as two management consultants, believe that if you have, in the CPG world, a product that looks better, smells better, it hits everything that from a trend perspective that the industry pushes out. 

And if it is at a great, great price, you can always sell that. 

And I don't think we really validated the idea in detail. Like we weren't running ads on Instagram to see if people like our design or anything like that. We had a very small group of people that we were validating the design with. 

And then I think we just took the risk. And it was just after COVID that we launched a brand in 2021. 

Chase Clymer  

Absolutely. And when you're launching a product that has a built-in competition in not a saturated space, but... this is probably the 10th time I've mentioned Ready Fire Aim on this podcast. 

Everyone, just go listen to that book. It's the best book ever. But yeah you can skip a few steps if you are basically building, not a copy of something that already exists, but it's like, yeah, it's pretty validated. People are already buying this thing. 

Bani Bahari  

Exactly. 

Jonathan Lawrence  

I was gonna say it's a great point. You know the market exists. 

It's not you're starting a totally new market, it's just can you make a product that's good enough? And can you get people's attention? 

Chase Clymer  

Absolutely. All right. So you got a product in mind. 

How do you make it? What's the next step? How do you go from idea to something physical, tangible to sell?

Bani Bahari

For us, it was kind of two paths. 

One was the branding. And I think in CPG, more than ever, that is an important part of the puzzle. 

Our approach from day one was if this looks really good, we can get people to buy it because it's going to be $10, $12. 

It's almost what people pay today. So if it looks, if it stands out from competition, we are winning. 

And then the second piece of it is how do we formulate this? This is where my background came into the picture. 

I grew up in a family business in beauty and knew a lot about formulation. I was in another beauty brand. 

So the first thing was figuring out approaches to product development. And I was adamant from day one that for this to be something real, we need to own all of our formulas, meaning recipes, and we need to custom create fragrances. 

And so with that, we had two more paths, creating the base of the products and then creating fragrances. 

And I would say that both of them are really, really hard. There are lots of barriers to entry. 

If you're not a celebrity brand with a contract at Alta, no manufacturer really wants to work with you. 

So we went to an independent chemist who formulated the products for us. We actually have worked with many chemists throughout the years now. 

And the second piece was fragrance and it's such an art and science and it's such a challenging world to get into because… fragrance houses aren't designed to work with startups. 

They want, you know, they want tides so that they're selling a million kilos of fragrance per month. 

For that, we found a consultant, she's a Hall of Famer, very popular in the industry, and basically convinced her to work with us. 

And then she kind of then took us to fragrance houses. I don't know if I missed anything, Jn.

Jonathan Lawrence  

Well, I would just say a couple of things. So what you said there is exactly right. 

I mean, some people when they start and it depends on what you're trying to do, you definitely see some people when they just have an idea, they can go on white label it. 

And maybe it's because they have such a big social media presence, they're really well known. 

If they put their name on it's going to sell. 

That was not going to be us. We were never going to white label this from the beginning, then you're kind of beholden to a manufacturer. So we really went to the custom row.

I would say just a little lesson there that we had, and it was really important for us, is when you're working with your chemist who's formulating it, actually then tying in very, very early the manufacturer. 

Because sometimes what the chemist just kind of designs and the formulation and the kind of pricing guidance they give, maybe isn't practical in reality at the quantities we want or the manufacturers that will work with us. 

So you really have to tie those two in early.

And on fragrance, that was, yeah, that was a really interesting one. 

Fragrance is a very challenging world to break into. And Bani was just very, very persuasive by finding the right consultant. 

Because oddly, it seemed crazy to me, but a fragrance house, you cannot pay them to give you a fragrance. 

They just sell you the actual fragrance once it's designed. So we couldn't even just go in and buy their kind of expertise. 

So we had to persuade them that, listen, we're bankable. Invest all your time and energy on us.

And eventually, we're going to be really successful and sell thousands and thousands of kilos or buy thousands of kilos of fragrance. 

Chase Clymer  

That's so interesting. Talking about needing to get the manufacturer involved a little bit earlier than you'd think. 

To draw a parallel to what we do over at the agency all the time, it's like we want to be seeing the designs before they're done to say, “Hey, that's not realistic on how these software's work or, “That's going to be a lot more work. Have you thought about doing it this way? That's going to save you tens of thousands of dollars because it's a little more off the shelf.” 

So I think it is making sure everyone's communicating within that creative part of building something. 

So you have a product, right? It smells great. It's a cool formulation that's unique to yourself. 

What's the next step? 

Bani Bahari  

Well, the next step was launch. And I think we may have started this business in 2021. And 2021 was a very odd year from COVID. 

We launched in March. It was still very much of a COVID. We were all at home. 

And we had an initial thought of, well, you have to spend money, go out there, acquire lots of customers. 

That was maybe a little bit of our expectations in month one, and then it quickly changed in month two. 

So we launched the company really just with PR and just a little bit of Facebook ads. 

And on ads, we were, for the most part, just trying to test the language, how we talk about it, and see if it makes any difference. 

To be honest, it wasn't making any difference because we weren't spending tens of thousands of dollars on those ads. They were just very, I guess, small budgets. 

But PR was amazing for us. From day one of the launch of this company, every opportunity came for us really through PR.

Very quickly after launch, we got a retailer interested, Urban Outfitters. So 3 months later, we launched at Urban Outfitters with a lot of products. We're no longer there today. 

But that was a very good validation. 

And then kind of slowly, a lot of editors picked the products, they could see the difference. They test so many products, they could just understand where we're playing.

And we, from there to now, we kind of consistently get 10 to 15 features. And PR has been a big part of our brand. 

Jonathan Lawrence  

If I could add to that, I'd say it's kind of interesting when you launch, there's a pressure, there's certain expectations out there. 

You read kind of these great stories that are becoming kind of infamous and, you know, here is a launch and they had this email distribution list and they blasted through and they sold out instantly.

Even though when we launched from the beginning, we sat down and we said to ourselves many times, “Listen, we'll have to be omnichannel and fundamentally, the price point that we're at, the volume we will have in the future will come from retail.”

And we told ourselves that. “And we said we are going to be in the business of initially launching online and selling individual units. Our future will be selling pallets. Like that is what this business is going to be built on.”

We knew all that but you still feel this pressure when you launch. Like, “Oh we have to grow.” 

And we got some sales in the first month, “Okay, well now we need to grow 25% next month and 25% the following month.” 

And even though that wasn't the game, I think for the first couple of months, we got caught up thinking it was going to be that kind of DTC game. 

And we even told ourselves, “Listen, DTC is not what it was when Bani was at Glossier. The world has changed. The cost on Facebook is vastly different now.” 

It was funny. The first couple of months, we really thought like that. And then it was like, “Okay, slow down.

When we really look at people in our industry who were successful and you start seeing headline numbers, this company sells for $350 million, you look, “Oh, they were founded 14 years ago.” 

It is kind of slow and steady. You get there, you find real customers, you integrate yourself into their daily routine. 

They slowly tell their friends about it. You pick up a good feature here and there. And that's really how we've kind of built our base rather than on the DTC E-com. 

Bani Bahari  

And I think I want to add to that because I think the first three months when we had all of this crazy expectation, we ended up winning like three or four industry awards. 

And that was a really good validation for us that we are making something different.

We just have to figure out the customer acquisition. And this is good enough that, you know, we want to ask men, men's health, today's show picked it up. 

This all happened in the first three months. 

And we weren't really doing anything but to send them the actual product. And at the time the product was just body spray in three fragrances, and that was the only thing. 

That gave us this kind of mentality that our goal isn't to just go there and acquire a customer every day. But our goal is to exist in the world and land a retailer as a partner because the products we're making, less than 10, 12, 15, in these categories, just existing online and growing online is really, really hard. 

Chase Clymer  

Absolutely. Products that have lower AOVs, once you do shipping and the cost to fulfill these things and loss. 

It's a hard game for lower commoditized items. So I have so many follow up questions for you. 

So first and foremost, were you guys bootstrapped? Did you take on some initial investment? 

How did you afford this launch? 

Bani Bahari  

We raised money but it was like friends and family $10,000 checks. So this is not any fundraising that was glamorous or anything like that. I think we raised $400,000.

And that's kind of got us through a lot of the launch and beyond. 

Jonathan Lawrence  

Yeah. And we self-funded for a good amount before that too. We wanted to make sure that we truly had products. 

We actually developed 4 products, we didn't mention that. 4 different products in 3 different scents that we developed ourselves first. 

And then launched, of course, when we launched, we focused on just one. But yeah, we had a modest budget. And so we had to stay pretty lean and mean. 

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Chase Clymer  

Are you allowed to share anything about the budgets that you put into having a PR team, what you're putting behind Facebook for that initial launch where you may or may not have gotten distracted by the shiny direct consumer direct response world. 

Bani Bahari  

I want to say we were paying our PR from $4,000, which I think every penny was worth it, to be honest with you. 

Jonathan Lawrence

Well, we made a lot of changes. I think another interesting thing is, let's say our marketing agency that we started with, we changed and then changed again, and then really moved to a freelance model.

And PR, we started with one and then changed to another one. And so what we found, I think, is we probably were able to reduce those costs by more than 50%. 

When you first launch, you don't really know what value and what they're bringing and all of that. 

You get a recommendation, you go with a firm and find that, okay, you're paying a lot and maybe not getting as much. 

I think we were able to get as much or more by reducing it. But yeah, our first marketing agency, I can't remember, can you remember? 

I mean, we were paying like a...

Bani Bahari  

$8,000 and we were with them for one month and realized we can't continue doing this. 

But you know, at the beginning, we just needed extra people to do things. Yeah, set up ads and get everything going. 

Now all of these happen in-house. We only just have a PR firm that we work with in high seasons. 

So we'll be turning on our PR in September, but the PR was off in summer for us, for example.

And we don't really use any marketing agencies. We have pretty much... We do everything in-house, freelancers, advisors, and then John and me, we are involved in all of that process of marketing ads. 

Chase Clymer  

Absolutely. So you mentioned that you knew you were going to be omnichannel from the get-go. 

Can you explain a little bit more about what that means to you, to the audience that might be a little bit newer to the space? Where exactly are you trying to sell the product?

Bani Bahari  

It's very interesting when we did the customer interviews before launching the company and asked everybody, where do you buy your body wash? Where do you buy your deodorant? 

There were two categories of answers. One was like classic New Yorkers, which is where we live, it was Amazon. And then the majority of other people were at a CVS or at a Target

So it was very clear for us from day one that this is not really, people aren't really looking for a relationship, a direct relationship with a brand for body products. They're kind of picking up something close to their homes. 

And that from day one made our strategy of you know, being priced less than $15. That means going to Target, Walmart, CVS, and some of the other boutiques. That was being in national retailers at mass level was the goal from day one for us. 

Jonathan Lawrence  

Yeah, and I think we view it as, of course, direct to consumers, the way to launch, because you're not out there, you don't have retail partnerships, and Amazon is a completely different beast. 

And then retail, there's lots of different ways to look at, mass and boutique. 

For us, we kind of positioned this from the beginning and said, we eventually want to get to be a premium product at Walmart.

What is the most expensive product they'll accept in this category and sell at Walmart? If we can do that, we know we can fit a lot of places such as Target, CVS, etc. 

Boutiques are another great spot for us as well as fitness outlets because we are kind of targeting athletic lifestyles. So again, retail, but kind of a smaller boutique category.

Chase Clymer  

Absolutely. Now it's been a couple years since launch. Obviously, direct to consumer isn't as much of a focus these days. 

So what shifted? Where did the energy start to go? 

Bani Bahari  

So when we launched, we had 3 SKUs. We knew that to go to retail, we needed more. 

So the first year and a half of the business was just bringing all of these products to market and tweaking. 

And by tweaking, our body spray is reformulated 3 times. Our body wash is reformulated twice. There's a lot of reformulation.

Now we're at a stage where everything, all the formulas are final, all of our packaging, the whole product side is very buttoned up. 

I would say it was about last year where we started discussing with retailers. Yeah, probably a year ago. 

We spoke into CVS, Walmart, and we were always speaking and continuing to speak with smaller boutiques. 

And then we landed a deal with Walmart to go into 50% of Walmart stores in the US. 

Chase Clymer  

That's a pretty big order. 

Bani Bahari

Yeah, it's massive. It's interesting because we went to Bentonville last year. 

And we had no idea who we were even talking to. 

Is this really going to work? John and I went to a Walmart store beforehand. And then we looked at the soap section and we're like, “oh my god, we can never sell here, it’s five soaps for $3.” 

Like, how is this even possible? One of our soaps is $8. Went to body wash, it was the same. 

And then we kind of met with a few buyers at Walmart. And I would say sometimes things happen for a reason. 

I think the best area of Walmart where we could have dreamed about. 

They picked us up and they said, this is kind of the premium bath. Every product is more premium.

And your price point fits, but we also have a white space. So it all worked out really well. 

And we got interest from them in terms of carrying us in February. And we had from February to July to make a lot of products, but also not knowing how many stores we're going to be in and how much they're going to be buying. 

So this was all John where he was like running all these models of… this is the scenario if they buy this many. 

So we were all like guesswork, creating all of these products when we really don't have money or resources to do this and hoping they will buy until July. 

So the order came in on a Wednesday and was picked up on a Monday. 

This is how quick, like we needed to have everything ready to go and be able to ship within like four days, which you know, nobody knows. I think we're really like… probably the smallest brand who has ever gone to Walmart with two people. 

Jonathan Lawrence  

Walmart is very interesting. And I think all mastery tailors, obviously they hold the power. 

As Bani said, we went, we met with them and they told us in February, “You have probably been awarded this *asterisk probably.” 

Like they have all the right to not award it to you. They won't tell you how many stores they won't tell you how many units they're going to purchase. 

None of it's guaranteed. They give you a rough indication of historically what they do but they hold their cards close to their chest right up until the week before you have to ship. 

And then you get the purchase order. On our side, we have to ramp up everything on our operations to be able to deliver somewhere between a few thousand and tens of thousands of units the next week. 

And so that's a really interesting challenge. You have to be really okay with the ambiguity of it. 

You don't want to overorder because obviously that can put a real financial pressure on your business.

But you don't want to under order because if you don't deliver to Walmart, you really get one shot. If they don't properly set you in the stores, you're really done. 

And that's true for all mass retail. But yeah, it was a fun challenge. 

But anyways, it worked out fine. They ordered 50% more than we had forecast. But we had just enough extra inventory to meet that. And then we immediately the next day had to put in an order for new production. 

Chase Clymer  

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

Jonathan Lawrence  

So I'm sure there's a few things. One, just talking about the Walmart order that I just find quite funny is I've just found in a business that, you know, you make a lot of plans. 

And when we look back on our plans, there's a couple of funny things to me is one, nothing ever went to plan. It was all just it feels like all of it went off the rails. 

But when I actually look back at our old financial model that we pitched to our friends and family, it's actually very accurate, believe it directionally, of what we thought for revenue, what we thought for growth, the timing of launching new products, and the timing for getting into mass retail. 

It worked out just not as we expected. We thought Target would be the first one, and we thought Walmart would be five years out. 

And then another funny thing about this Walmart thing is that we had been talking to CVS a couple times, and they wanted us to come in, and we rejected them because we're just not mature enough and right for that type of environment.

We went down to Bentonville fully with the expectation that Walmart is not a fit for us and we will be saying no. 

And we went and looked at a Walmart and confirmed our hypothesis. This is not the right partner. 

And then we went into that room with that mindset and they told us, “Actually, we've got a new section and we're not positioning you there. We'd like to position you here next to these other brands and you'll be the only body washing of these things.” 

And we ended up leaving saying, one, it's a great fit and two, we got it.

And I'm not quite sure what that is, but there's something about sometimes you go into a meeting really kind of pushing hard to try and sell it and it doesn't work out. 

And there's sometimes you go into it, um, maybe just a different mindset and a different position.

 

And it ended up, we got there and they were selling to us. And, uh, it was a nice position to be in such that they weren't even asking us in that meeting questions about like,

“How big are you? How long have you been around? How many employees? Are you sure you can fulfill millions of dollars in orders if we actually award this to you?” It was more like, “No, let us show you why we think you're a good fit here.” 

And so that was totally unintentional, but it obviously worked out well for us. 

Bani Bahari

Also, I think, kind of maybe just adding to what John was saying, you really don't know what works and what doesn't. 

So parallel pathing and pursuing multiple options with a true real open mind without being jaded either by rejection or things that happen along the way, just keeping an open mind and showing up for, you know, every meeting. 

I think that's why we could get to a mass retailer very quickly. 

Jonathan Lawrence

Yeah. There's a couple other key lessons, I think for a brand, if you want to be on the channel and get into retail, finding a good rep firm, very important, like a rep firm who has relationships with the retailers you want to be in.

They're going to go out and they're basically your business development team for you. 

If they're already selling products or to the retailers in the right parts of the store that you want to be in the right category, but it's not completely competitive, it really helps because they already have all those meetings lined up and then they can just slide you in as, “Oh, here's another interesting product you'd like.” 

So I think finding the right rep firm is key to success. And our rep firm is certainly key to getting into Walmart.

And then one other thing that's just been a good learning that Banny was saying about parallel pathing, what comes with that too, is maybe just kind of having the confidence or just the conviction to change your plan and change your mind on anything. 

Like we said, we did a lot of work finding a marketing agency to launch with. We lasted 30 days with them. 

It was very, very quick to assess. “This is critical. We're spending money. Do we need to be spending this money? We could have afforded to keep going for several more months.

But no, it pulled off the bandaid. We can go find a new one.”

And so we made, I think, very, very quick decisions in that first year. 

Because you don't know what's going to work. There's a lot of instability. That's okay. Make changes. And now the business feels much more stable because we found the right partners. 

Chase Clymer  

Awesome. Well, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show and sharing your story. 

If I'm listening to this and I want to try the product, where should I go? What should I do? 

Bani Bahari  

You can go on offcourt.com. And we would love to make a discount code for your audience. 

Chase Clymer

Oh, awesome. 

Bani Bahari  

Yes. Let's do honestcommerce15. We'll make that discount code 15% off everything on our website. 

You can definitely go on Amazon. But every box from our direct store is much nicer with more samples and things like that. 

So yeah, thank you so much. 

Chase Clymer  

Awesome. 

Jonathan Lawrence

And coming soon, very soon in Walmart. So that'll be... It's just starting to go on shelves now and starting September.

You'll see us at Walmart. 

Chase Clymer  

That's amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. We'll make sure to link to that. Put that discount code in the show notes for everybody. And I look forward to talking to you in the future. 

Bani Bahari

Thank you so much. 

Jonathan Lawrence

Thanks so much, Chase. Appreciate it. 

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!