🚀 Arrae's million-dollar influencer strategy, live commerce workshop, big news for Amazon sellers

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👇 Today we're covering

• 📓 Resource roundup

• 🎟️ Workshop: Live shopping 101 with the founders of Kiramoon and Droplet

• 🗞️ Skim the headlines

• 🛒 11 Ecommerce apps powering Ugg's online store

• 🎁 Giveaway! Win a $1,000 business bundle

• 🚀 Michelle Hu's steady and sustainable path to 7-figures in sales

• 👀 This influencer strategy got Arrae to $1 million in sales within 1 year

• 💥 Michelle Cordeiro Grant sold her first company for $105 million: here's what she's doing differently in her second startup

📓 Resource roundup

• This Linkedin thread is basically just a list of email addresses for people who invest in food and beverage brands! Gold. 🔗 Tell me more 

• Alicia Scott's building Range Beauty, a makeup-meets-skincare line with shades for melanin-rich, acne, and eczema-prone skin stocked in Target and now joining Sephora’s 2023 accelerator program. (Maybe you saw her on Shark Tank!?). This is the worksheet template she shares with mentees to help them craft their brand story. (This download is a Business Bestie exclusive). 🔗 Tell me more 

• Black-owned businesses have a shot at this $200k grant, thanks to the 15 Percent Pledge. Deadline to enter is 31 December—run. 🔗 Tell me more 

• Social media shopping is big, and brands like Tower28 have been making their online stores feel like social media by integrating UGC videos. Conversions increased 28% in 16 days at Tower28 after making these changes. 🔗 Tell m=e more

• One perfectly-executed cold email can change your business, but how do you avoid the cringe? Investor and entrepreneur Sahil Bloom knows how to write a great one. 🔗 Tell me more

• A guide to the most sustainable packaging suppliers exists and it makes sourcing so much easier. 🔗 Tell me more

• League of Innovators accelerator have opened applications for their Boost residency program. You need to be based in Canada and younger than 30 to have a shot at this one. 🔗 Tell me more

• If you haven’t been experimenting with ChatGPT by OpenAI, you’re missing out. It’s an AI chatbot that everyone's talking about and makes running a business easier. 🔗 Tell me more

🎟️ Upcoming events: A live shopping workshop and group business coaching

It's all going down in the Female Founder World community home. Here are the online events we have coming up over the next month. We hope we see you there!

✨ Group Business Coaching with Michelle Hu, Founder of Etoile Collective (Business Bestie Subscribers Only): 15 Dec at 6pm ET

Michelle Hu is the founder of Etoile Collective, a brand known for cute beauty accessories, mirrors, and cases. She started the business from her bedroom in Melbourne, Australia back in 2016, with just 30 acrylic makeup organizers. Six years later Etoile Collective is a seven-figure business. Join Female Founder World's Group Business Coaching Call to ask Michelle how she's been building her business, and for her advice on what steps to take next in your own brand.

✨ Live Shopping 101: How to Sell via Livestream (Business Bestie Subscribers Only): 21 Dec at 6:30pm ET

Live shopping is blowing up. It's been huge in Asia for years, and is starting to catch on on the United States—by 2023 live shopping (selling products through a livestream video on digital platforms) is expected to hit $25 billion in the US. Female Founder World is tapping two founders who are early adopters of this strategy to teach an online workshop on how to master live selling.

Join Lindsey Martin, founder of Kiramoon, and Celeste Perez, founder of Droplet together with Jasmine Garnsworthy, creator of Female Founder World, for this 50-minute session on all things live selling. We'll cover what platforms to use (and how to use them), what it costs in time and resources, how to make sure people show up to your livestream, how to sell via live video, and everything else you need to get started in this space.

🗞️ Skim the headlines

AMAZON: Everyone wants in on that TikTok short-form video success—including Amazon. The ecommerce giant just announced their own TikTok-like shopping experience, Inspire—and everyone selling on Amazon needs to get well-versed in it, fast. It’s a shoppable short-form video and photo feed with content from influencers, brands and other creators. Like with TikTok, shoppers select interests—think broad categories like ‘skincare’ and ‘women’s style’, and more niche options like ‘work from home’. Content feeds will then continue to be personalized as the algorithm gets to know each user. Inspire has been rolling out to some people in the United States this December, and is rolling out over the coming months.

FUNDRAISING: Big congrats to Amber Fillerup, the influencer-turned founder behind Dae Hair who just raised $8 million to grow her brand. A bunch of big name influencers and investors like Whitney Port, Aimee Song, and Christine Andrew have invested. In another major female founder fundraise, Allison Ellsworth and the team at Poppi just announced they raised $25 million in a series B round led by their original Shark Tank investor Rohan Oza. Since their launch in 2015, Poppi has gone super viral on TikTok, brought on a team of 60, and is growing 148% in year-over-year revenue. We love to see it.

SEPHORA ACCELERATE 2023: Seven newbie beauty brands are celebrating big time this week, because they just landed in the Sephora Accelerate 2023 program. These BIPOC-founded businesses will get mentorship and support on how to launch at Sephora over a six-month program. The lineup includes Glosshood, OUI the People, Range Beauty, Brown Girl Jane, Moodeaux, Seaspire, and Of Other Worlds.

TRENDS: 2023 trend predictions are coming in hot, but Pinterest’s roundup is one we’re actually paying attention to. For the past three years these trends have been predicted with an 80% success rate. So, what's coming up next year? Mushroom everything, micro bangs, gender-neutral parenting, and rave culture were some highlights. Instagram’s 2023 Trend Report is also here and shares the issues, topics and trends that matter to Gen-Z consumers. Apparently two-thirds of Gen Z shoppers plan to buy skincare and beauty products to protect against extreme weather, and over half plan on DIYing their clothes in 2023. Google also released its top trending searches of 2022. TikTok trends came in on top in the beauty category, particularly questions like “what is slugging?” and “how to add niacinamide to skincare routine?”.

BRAND NEWS: Arrae, created by Female Founder World podcast guest Siff Haider, launched its newest natural wellness innovation this month: Gut Boost. It’s a pre-meal digestive tincture that gets your gut in top shape to break down foods, absorb nutrients, and prevent bloating. DEUX, founded by Sabeena Ladha, also introduced a new product—vegan and snackable donut holes, and announced retail expansion into 380 Sprouts stores nationwide. In other brands new, Emma Chamberlain’s Chamberlain Coffee is stepping into the food world with the launch of vegan pancake mix and syrup. Who’s hungry? 👀

🛒 11 ecommerce apps powering Ugg's online store

Whether you’re an Ultra Mini boot girlie or more into classic cozies, Uggs have come back in a big way, reportedly doing $374 million in sales last quarter. While you might not be there yet in revenue (emphasis on the yet), you can still use the affordable tech tools making Ugg's growth possible. Scroll on to see the ecommerce apps and tools Uggs is using, and to benchmark your business against this category leader.

Total website visits in October 2022: 11.3M (up 47.9% over the last month)

Bounce rate: 46.05%

Average visit duration: 3 minutes, 23 sec

Average pages viewed per site visit: 4.77

Ecommerce tech stack: Font Awesome for web fonts and icons, YOTTAA for for checkout and site optimization, Rakuten for discounting, Pixlee for UGC and analytics, Gladly for customer support, Afterpay and Quadpay for buy now pay later, AddThis for share buttons, Trusted Shops for buyer protection and feedback, Salesforce Marketing Cloud for email, messaging and chat, and Yottaa for SEO.

Instagram insights: 1.4 million Instagram followers (up 3% over the last year), averages 2,300 likes per post, averages 29 comments per post.

TikTok insights: 80,500 TikTok followers (up 33% over the last year).

Homepage evolution:

🎁 Giveaway! Win a $1,000 business bundle

Enter for your chance to win a $500 Apple voucher, a $200 gift card to use with ilovecreatives, an obé Fitness annual subscription valued at $169.99, an annual subscription to the legal templates and contracts that creative entrepreneurs need via Creators Legal, a daily planner, and more prizes!

🚀 Michelle Hu's steady and sustainable path to 7-figures in sales

A 22-year-old Michelle Hu launched Etoile Collective, a brand known for cute beauty accessories, mirrors, and cases, from her bedroom in Melbourne, Australia back in 2016. By 2020, she had bootstrapped a business doing more than multi-seven figures in annual revenue. Here's how. ⬇️

Michelle wanted a makeup organizer like the ones she saw on Pinterest. They didn't exist in Australia, so she had it made when a family member visited China. She loved the way it decluttered her space and made her feel, and got great feedback from friends, so ordered 30 units to sell online. It took her a full month to sell through that first order.

After two years working in investment banking by day and on Etoile at night, she hit $20,000 in organic monthly sales, mostly acquired through Instagram content and word of mouth. That milestone opened up Michelle’s mind to believe Etoile could be a big business opportunity.

Digital ads became a key strategy in 2019. Michelle worked with a freelancer, first spending $100 a day. Next came SEO, managed by a freelancer she found on LinkedIn, then a full website relaunch, which cost Etoile $60,000. Up until this point, Michelle shot all her product photos on her iPhone and DIY-ed every part of the site.

“I cannot emphasize enough how important SEO is, especially when we launched in the US and having to manage those two sites and having very similar content.”

Then, Etoile Collective layered in PR, and in 2022 launched into the United States, using TikTok to fuel the launch.

Etoile was planning its US launch when a video went viral on TikTok, sending 15,000 users in 24 hours to its still-password protected US site. The top comment on the video was, "When is this launching in the US?"

The website wasn’t perfect yet, but Michelle went live anyway to capture as many sales as possible—and managed to pull off a successful US launch with zero marketing spend. Over the next week, 45,000 visitors hit the site.

“Instagram is challenging at the moment. We're definitely finding it hard to grow like the way we used to. So we have shifted a lot more attention and time into TikTok.”

Michelle says keeping up with trends and focusing on quantity over quality on TikTok works, and that high production videos don’t hit on the app.

“It's always the stuff that takes two minutes or the very trendy sounds that do extremely well on TikTok—and it's about getting in early on those sounds. So unfortunately, that means that you do have to be on your phone a lot and you do have to be scrolling.”

Want to join a live group business coaching call with Michelle and ask her your biz questions? Join our Business Besties membership for exclusive access.

👀 Siff Haider bootstrapped to $1 million in revenue within a year using this influencer strategy

Influencer and editor-turned-entrepreneur Siff Haider came up with the idea for Arrae in 2019 after spotting a gap in the market for organic, high-quality supplements that solved targeted problems while being beautiful. She teamed up with her partner and used their wedding savings to get her idea into the world.

The idea took off—fast. After six months Arrae hit profitability. They reached $1 million in revenue in one year. Three years post-launch, following a small seed round, Arrae's revenue has grown 10x to hit 8-figures.

Arrae's launch plan revolved around gifting influencers and being transparent about their budget and passionate about the mission.

"I wrote really compelling emails about why I thought the product would make a difference in their life, how I expected nothing in return, and that we were broke."

Siff's influencer strategy tips:

• Involve aligned influencers even before launch. Siff sent product for feedback in a rolling pre-launch to generate initial buzz.

• Re-engagement is key. Arrae's gifting assortment is split into 60% sent to new influencers and 40% restocking influencers they have previously gifted to stay top of mind.

• Paid partnerships should be longterm partnerships. Siff doesn't recommend one-off paid collaborations and only works with creators when they've proven traction and are genuine fans of the brand.

Arrae has built a devoted community by treating customers like influencers. PR gift boxes are identical to the package customers receive, Arrae throws events for their community of customers and not just for influencers or press, and sometimes they'll partner with aligned brands to offer fun freebies as a gift with purchase.

Arrae also has an invite-only ambassador program, tapping their most loyal customers for focus groups, content creation, and referrals.

Want more tips on bootstrapping your business from Siff? Check out her interview on episode 105 of the Female Founder World podcast.

💥 Michelle Cordeiro Grant sold her first company for $105 million: here's what she's doing differently in her second startup

Michelle Cordeiro Grant sold her first startup, Lively, for $105 million only three years after launching. She took on Victoria’s Secret to bring women underwear they’d actually want to wear daily (so, not a corset)—and won.

Her second act is Gorgie, an energy drink with beauty benefits for women. Energy drinks are an $18 billion industry that, Michelle says, isn't catering to women. This means we have a front row seat to follow a proven founder's pre-launch strategy unfold in real time—an experience that's harder to come by than tickets to Taylor Swift.

This time, she's building hype with experiences. Lively launched in 2016 with a referral program that created a 133,000-email waitlist by incentivizing sign ups with rewards like merch and product. Now at Gorgie, Michelle’s created a similar email referral program, this time rewarding referrals with access and experiences rather than products.

"When we ask people what they want, they want experiences. And so Gorgie is offering now in our pre-launch access to disco parties, yacht days, and benefits from different brands, not just ours."

Although Gorgie only just received its first canned product in late 2022, they've been spreading Gorgie swag since September. Michelle says new brands must get out there in a physical way long before the product launches.

"Your brand's only as big as you make it to seem in the beginning. So, number one: Swag. You can get a cooler and stickers and postcards made—and now you've arrived."

Michelle raised money from investors to launch her Gorgie, and has learned fundraising is all about FOMO: "Raising money is all about the FOMO that you create and the energy that you're putting out there."

To win in a male-dominated industry, Michelle’s tapping male mentors to help scale Gorgie: "Bringing in male mentors is a narrative that we as women have to start sharing more and more."

The biggest difference since launching her last company? Michelle says this time she’s looking at it with more of a “glass half full” mentality, leaning into the fun of it, instead of worrying about things that could go wrong.