Kevin Keller
I think one of the things that consumers fail to appreciate, samples are really expensive to make. And you know, as a bootstrapped company, it wasn't just a matter of is this a good return on our investment as we try to grow this business, but is it the best return on investment, right? There's just only so much cash.
Chase Clymer
Honest Ecommerce is a weekly podcast where we interview direct-to-consumer brand founders and leaders to find out what it takes to start, grow, and scale an online business today. Honest Ecommerce is proudly produced by Electric Eye, a Shopify Plus partner helping e-commerce brands sell more with strategic design and development. Visit electriceye.io for more information.
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today I'm welcoming to the show Kevin Keller. Kevin is one of the co-founders of the luxury fragrance company Fulton & Roark. Kevin, welcome to the show. I'm excited to have you. So for those that are not familiar with the brand, could you quickly talk about the types of products you're bringing to market over there?
Kevin Keller
Thanks, Chase.
Sure, yeah, we're best known for fragrances and we have a couple of different versions of that. We have a solid fragrance, which is a wax-based fragrance. So unlike a traditional spray fragrance, you can almost picture the consistency of a hard lip balm. So as opposed to spraying, you swipe on top, apply to your pulse points, and are able to go from there.
And then our biggest product is an extrait de parfum. So it's very similar to any other spray fragrance you'd be familiar with. The only difference with our line is that they're at a more concentrated level. So when you hear those terms like EDT and EDC, or de cologne or de parfum, those are all just about the concentration of the fragrance. So the extrait is at about double the industry average. So it performs a little bit differently.
We offer fragrances that are a little bit outside of the mainstream, and then we have a few accompanying products like bar soaps and deodorants, beard oil, that sort of thing.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. I guess can you take me back in time? Where does your love for fragrance and perfumery start? And then how does that kind of pivot into, you know, "I think this is going to be a career, this is going to be a business for me"?
Kevin Keller
Yeah, I wonder how dissimilar mine is from anyone who didn't grow up in Paris or Grasse, in that I just grew up absolutely loving fragrance. As a little kid, I was fascinated. My dad was a guy who always wore fragrance, and my sister, who's ten years older than me, was a model and very much into fashion. And so I think for me, gravitating more toward the fragrance side was what interested me more. So from a little kid I was into it. And then, you know, that passion just kind of developed as I got older. And it wasn't until I was in my late twenties that I thought about really going after it as a career. But I'm glad I did.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing. And let's talk about going after it as a career. Back in 2013, you co-founded the company with $11,000 and a belief that perfumery should be both deeply personal and distinctly American. Other than that, you know, amazing outlook, what else did it take? What was going on back then?
Kevin Keller
Yeah, well, you know, like so many things, I think if we knew how complex, how daunting it might be, I'm not sure if we would have tackled it, but I'm glad we didn't know any better, like so many adventures in life, I suppose.
Yeah, I met my partner while I was in grad school. We were both into fragrance, we both loved some design theory, thinking through problems with a different lens was sort of one of those things that we both got excited about, which sounds like nothing, but you know, what that meant for us with fragrance was we felt like there was so much sameness in the market. And so much of it was just, you know, variations on the same thing we'd smelled a million times, in the same format we'd seen a million times. And we wondered if there wasn't some opportunity there to try something different.
And so, you know, our first product was the solid fragrance. Not because we thought that was the be-all and end-all of fragrance or what all people were going to want in the future, but rather for people who travel, for people who get ready at the gym every morning or go straight from work to after-work activities, the bar or dinner or whatever, the idea that a glass bottle would be your only option just didn't seem like the move. And so we started with that product because we thought it was the product that we all needed the most. And then, you know, a lot of it has been following what our customers wanted from there and following what got us excited. So some of those accompanying products, a lot of those came from wanting things that we just felt like we're missing in the market.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. And you have a bit of a unique story compared to some of the other guests that have been on the show, where your kind of go-to-market strategy, direct-to-consumer, wasn't really a part of that model. So how did you originally hit the market? What was your kind of growth plan then? And then we can talk a bit about when direct-to-consumer came in.
Kevin Keller
Yeah, you're right. And it's one of those lessons for me that I like to remind myself of, that we can be wrong about a lot of things and still do okay. And maybe we weren't wrong at the very beginning, but our hypothesis as we were getting started was: we are a company you've never heard of, offering a product you've never heard of, in fragrances that you're not familiar with. The idea that people are going to want to go straight to the website and buy something wholly unfamiliar in every regard just seemed crazy to us.
And what our strategy was, was we better be in a place where there's excellent customer service, the kinds of retailers where, you know, you walk in and someone immediately acknowledges you, asks you what you're up to, what you're looking for, and builds that rapport where at the end of your shopping, after you've bought a couple pair of jeans or a suit or whatever that might be, they say, "By the way, have you seen this? Are you interested in this?"
And so that was our initial strategy. We just thought, yeah, we've got to introduce ourselves. We need high touch, because the containers themselves, while they're beautiful in my opinion, they're fairly minimalistic. I mean, they're just, you know, a cast metal design, very, very slim, about the size of a Zippo lighter or something. And so we thought if these just sit on the shelf, even at a big box store, no one is going to have any idea what they are. So that was why we started that way. But, you know, we eventually pivoted, of course, but it just felt like it was the only way to get started.
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How did the pivot occur? Was it, "we're just going to give this a shot," or was there any other inspiration where you're like, "maybe there's something to this direct-to-consumer model that we're not fully realizing"?
Kevin Keller
Again, I'd love to tell you that it's because we're business geniuses or creative geniuses. The reality was that we were getting featured in a GQ article. It was a really big piece for us. I mean, we were still really small, and we're getting featured in this GQ piece, and, you know, it was in print — this makes me feel very old, back when print magazines were still a big deal and were exciting for us.
So, we're going to be in this piece, we can't wait, and the reporter says, "By the way, we're going to do a digital version, of course. What's the link for people to buy your stuff?" And I said, "We don't have one, we don't sell it online." And he said, "Well, you better. This is the way we work, we've got to have a link, it's almost rude to our customers. You guys aren't available in very many markets yet, people need to have a way to buy it." And so we said, "You're right." And he said, "I really do need a link."
And so I think that was on a Thursday, and we said, "Cool, give us a couple of days." And over the weekend, basically, with some dental floss and toothpicks, we built a website. We had a website, but we didn't have any e-com. So we got that all set up, and we waited, and, you know, all of a sudden, day one, we get some purchases. And we think, "well, that's exciting, I guess," except that, you know, these people have never smelled the fragrance. And I'd like to say that I write well about the fragrance, that it helps give people a sense of what it's going to be, but surely it's going to be like a seventy percent return rate, we're going to lose money really fast this way.
And to our amazement, we had almost no returns. And then we were featured on this website called Uncrate, and it was the biggest day ever for years for us, where it was just, you know, flying off the shelves. We're kind of panicked, we still had day jobs, and all of a sudden it's selling like crazy. And again, we have this moment like, "no, the return's coming," and after a couple of years of looking at it, always kind of biting our nails saying, "when is this shoe going to drop?" — we were averaging less than a two percent return rate or exchange rate. So it's pretty great.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing. And it's funny that they were like, "No, you need a website," and you're like, "we're going to figure it out." Was that first website — we've got a lot of technologists that listen to the show — was it built on Shopify, or was it something else?
Kevin Keller
It was built on Squarespace, which was not the right template. And I will say, you know, we had a great creative agency behind us that we were working with. They were old friends of mine who were just very kind, media creative, great folks. And, you know, with what we told them, which was, "hey, we need a website that looks really nice, that tells our story, and then directs people to go find us out in the world," Squarespace was great.
But as e-com became a big deal, we needed a lot more complexity, we wanted a lot more horsepower. And so pretty quickly had to pivot and totally rebuild our website on Shopify within a year or so.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. That was no fun at all, but we got through it.
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With this direct-to-consumer growth strategy kind of coming out of nowhere, you're obviously getting this press, which I can't stress hard enough to the audience — earned media, especially from something like a GQ, is worth a lot of eyes, and that will definitely get traffic to the website. Now, did you kind of just double down in that lane, like, "okay, this worked, we're going to continue to go for these PR pieces," and that's going to be how we sell stuff online? Or did you start to get into, you know, email or retargeting? How did you kind of get the flywheel started?
Kevin Keller
Yeah, you know, email's been a huge part of our strategy, because, you know, one thing that we've never done is switch over to an Amazon model at all. We keep our products off of Amazon as best we can, or really any third-party websites. And so our thought there was, we want to have a deep and meaningful relationship with our customers. This may sound corny, but fragrance is a very personal thing. And, you know, the way we see our job is to help you feel like you're the best version of yourself. And so, what we're asking you is, like, what is it that you want to feel? How do you want to be perceived? What's your vibe today, right? And we can help find a fragrance that really accentuates that and makes you feel like your best self.
And so all that to say, we wanted to chat, we wanted to have a relationship with our customers, and it's something that we knew we couldn't do well if we were leaving that to a company like Amazon, where we were not allowed to have as much contact. So really, those early emails were more about just building a relationship, not meant to be super transactional. We wanted to tell our story, we were genuinely thankful that people rolled the dice with us.
So over time, though, of course, as that email list grew, that was super helpful. And we've always seen it as almost like four points, right? So we wanted to be an excellent retail source that helped, sort of, prove our company as being worthwhile, as reputable, that sort of thing. We wanted a lot of earned media, like you said, because it just helps reinforce everything. And then, you know, we wanted to grow our e-com, because the bigger our e-com, the better our website, the more customers we had who were aware of us in the world, the better our stores performed.
And then that last piece was, we, through email marketing, we really wanted to cultivate that relationship with our customers so that they could trust us, that they would try a new product, that they would tell people about it. And, you know, they, for years, have been the people who've created content for us and helped sell us to more people, as a bootstrap company. They were a huge part of the marketing efforts, and not just the revenue.
Chase Clymer
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And something that is kind of unique to the fragrance game is this whole concept of samples, right? And you guys took a bit of a different approach there. So how did you get over the, I guess, industry standard of not giving away free samples and charging for samples, and how did that affect things?
Kevin Keller
You know, it's funny, we knew that we needed to do samples, because for years we were primarily a solid fragrance, and so we knew the easiest way, of course, to overcome that was to get product in people's hands. But we wanted to make sure it was done well, so it took us longer than we wanted.
And I think one of the things that consumers fail to appreciate — samples are really expensive to make. And, you know, as a bootstrapped company, it wasn't just a matter of "is this a good return on our investment as we try to grow this business," but "is it the best return on investment," right? There's just only so much cash. And so dropping tens of thousands into figuring out sample packs was daunting.
And so we did play around with some free samples and things like that, but what we realized pretty quickly, as we were laying things out in Meta ad campaigns where we were trying to promote these samples, was that we actually wanted the people who wanted to pay for samples. Because, you know, we totally borrowed from Warby Parker, where we asked you to put some money up front, but then you got it back. So our original sample sets — I think when we were doing solids, it was maybe sixteen or twenty-four dollars — and then you got that same credit back, so that if you bought a second purchase, it was basically like the samples had been free. But we were just asking customers to put some skin in the game, right? Because to create samples is expensive, and then to send samples is expensive. So we were able to offset our costs, get those customers who actually cared enough to put some money down, and then that enabled us to grow way faster than we would have expected.
And then what's been interesting is, I think we were really early on that. We've seen a lot of other fragrance companies do similar things since, and I think attitudes have shifted about samples in the market. For one thing, I think, as fragrance has become a fast-growing category right now, people are curious to try new things, and they actually want to try a bunch of things. And so I think they recognize, "no, this isn't like going to Costco to see if I want to buy the meatball or whatever." This is, "I want to try five different things just because it would be fun to wear five different fragrances, and maybe I'll hate one, and like two, and really love two, and that's fine." And so, yeah, at this point, it feels like much less of a lift than it did when we first got started asking people to pay for samples.
Chase Clymer
Hey everybody, just a quick reminder, please like this video and subscribe if you haven't. We're releasing interviews like this every week, so don't miss out. Now back to the interview.
Sampling is such an interesting thing in just the CPG landscape. Obviously, it lends itself very well to some of your contemporaries, be it in skincare or makeup or beauty — it's that sample, there's a lot of different ways to do it. And I think it also just translates back to, there's a lot of different ways to build a business, and you don't necessarily have to follow any sort of mandate that's out there. You just have to show up every day and make decisions, and, you know, the overnight success takes ten years, as they say.
Now, Kevin, is there anything I didn't ask you about today that you think would resonate with our audience?
Kevin Keller
One of those things that I find myself talking through with people is the ability to not get too high or low in these moments. You know, Facebook has been — I don't know if you're hearing this from a lot of guests, but a lot of the conversations we've had in the last nine months or so, there's been a lot more volatility in Meta than we're used to seeing, in terms of everything from conversion rates to what those rates look like, ROAS, and so on.
And I mean, the nice thing about the strategy that we've built, by having a strong wholesale side of the business, by having a meaningful relationship with our customers that's not purely transactional, by having a really good team — when those things get crazy for a little while, we're able to just roll with it and not panic, and not start making too many fast changes. And so, as things have smoothed out over the last couple of months, that's — we never lost any sleep during those times.
And I think that really comes from feeling like you've got — sometimes that is where you're talking about the overnight sensation that takes ten years. Sometimes that's the upside of it taking ten years, is that you don't have those moments where you think, "we're absolute geniuses," or "my God, we're going to ruin everything because it was a bad week or a bad month." You know, so long as you've got more good months than bad, you can work with that.
Chase Clymer
Younger businesses care a little too much about the daily metrics. While those can show you maybe there's a mistake happening, you've got to zoom out to really see what the health of the business is. And I feel like it does give you some sort of unnecessary mental stress when you're down to the hour of stuff. It's like, there are way more important things you, as a founder, should be focusing on.
And specifically talking to Meta and advertising and channel partners, it's like that's the first thing you should start outsourcing, to people that that's what they're really good at. And you should stop thinking about it and you should stop stressing about it, because what you are uniquely qualified to do as a founder usually is you have a very large, outsized passion for the problem that your product solves. And that's where you should be spending most of your time — that thousand-dollar-an-hour activity isn't you micromanaging conversion rate within Facebook's back end.
Kevin Keller
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think there's also — I think when you do it yourself, there is that moment where you start to feel like a fraud or a bad business person when you don't know the answer to every single question anymore, because you've grown to the point where you're not looking at every metric, at every new account, and so on. And for me, that made me insecure for a while.
And then, you know, eventually I realized — obviously I want to know the important numbers here, I want to know what's going on — but also, the fact that I can't tell you everything about the business means, probably, that I'm using my time more effectively, because, to your point, Chase, we've found people who are good at those things. And so now it's not my job to try to have my brain in a hundred different places all the time. I can have it down to a manageable twenty-five different places, and, you know, that's progress.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. Delegating is one of the hardest things for an entrepreneur to learn, and it takes a different amount of time for each of us, I guess.
Kevin Keller
For sure.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. Kevin, you talked earlier and throughout this about the quality of your products, and how much time, love, and energy you put into them. If I'm listening to this and I also enjoy fragrance, or I want to check something out, maybe buy it for my boyfriend or a loved one, where should I go?
Kevin Keller
Best place to go is FultonandRoark.com. That's F-U-L-T-O-N and R-O-A-R-K dot com. We have all of our fragrances there. Like I said, what we talk about when we talk about American fine fragrance is kind of trying to look at fragrance from a uniquely American perspective — not that that's a better perspective, but it's our genuine, authentic perspective. So we're looking at different fragrances, different formats, different ingredients that maybe you're not used to.
And then, yeah, start with a sample set. We have discovery sets where you can build them yourself, find the scents that speak to you, and then, you know, from there, take some time with them, wear them around, ask your boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, or even your friends, what they think — because, you know, it's one thing to smell a fragrance on paper, but what really matters is how it smells on you. So yeah, get the sample set, take a little time with it, and then figure out what you like and move from there.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing all those amazing insights.
Kevin Keller
Yeah, thanks for having me, Chase. It was fun.
