💅 Sephora's TikTok reckoning, UGC for brands workshop, Brightland's playbook for a sell-out launch

Hey friends, I want to thank you for joining me on this wild, offbeat entrepreneurial ride. I love building Female Founder World alongside all of you, and watching you launch and grow your own businesses. We're only a year in and already there are tens of thousands of us building our businesses together. If you're loving Female Founder World's content, please forward this email to one friend who will find it useful. Let's keep growing this universe of entrepreneurial baddies building consumer brands.

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👇 Today we're covering

• 📓 Resource roundup

• 🎟 Workshop: How to Launch an App on a Budget with Olivia DeRamus, Founder of Communia

• 🤳 Workshop: UGC 101 with Content Expert YouMe Lin

• 🗞️ Skim the headlines

• 💦 She sold out at launch and built a 1,000-person waitlist

• 👑 8 ecommerce tools powering Mejuri's online store

• 💥 Jiggy Puzzles founder Kaylin Marcott collabed with artists to sell over 250,000 puzzles

📓 Resource roundup

• There's a chance to win funding for your business every single month as part of WomensNet's Amber Grant program. Just fill out the (surprisingly short) application form once to be considered for every grant program this year. 🔗 Tell me more

• Several Google for Startups Accelerator programs are open for applications, including one for Seed to Series A tech startups based in Canada and a 10-week accelerator for businesses focused on climate change in North America. 🔗 Tell me more

• New York founders: The state is now matching up to $250,000 in funding, as long as you have raised less than $2 million. Consumer products is one of the areas they’re focused on! 🔗 Tell me more

• Julianna Dahbura’s nail art brand, Deco Miami, has collaborated with buzzy brands like Otherland, Oceanus Swim, and Lele Sadoughi. Last week she spilled her strategy on how to plan, pitch and execute an effective product collaboration with the Female Founder World community. This workshop recording is linked in the ‘Workshop Recording’ room in the Female Founder community home. (Available to paid Business Bestie subscribers only.) 🔗 Tell me more

🎟 New event: A live workshop on how TF to build an app on a budget

✨ Workshop: How to Launch an App on a Budget with Olivia DeRamus, founder of Communia (Business Bestie Subscribers Only) on 21 February at 6pm ET

Olivia DeRamus, founder of Communia is jumping into the Female Founder World community to show you how to get your app idea out of your head and into the world, and how to make it happen on a budget.

She’ll be covering: who should build your app and how to find them; where to find white label solutions; budgets; creating your priority features list; and how to get your first users.

Olivia built and bootstrapped Communia, a social media app for women and marginalized genders to connect on taboo topics like money, sex and mental health, in a way that doesn’t happen on Instagram and Twitter. Communia now has over 100,000 downloads and over 20,000 daily users.

🤳 New event: 'UGC for Brands Workshop with Content Expert YouMe Lin'

✨ Workshop: UGC for Brands with YouMe Lin (Business Bestie Subscribers Only) on 28 February at 6pm ET

Learn how to master user generated content in your business in this 40-minute workshop with YouMe Lin, creator of content marketing agency Cloud Studio. YouMe's team works with brands like Bumble, Clarins, Naadam, Sundays Studio, and in this session she'll teach you how to win with UGC.

🗞️ Skim the headlines

BEAUTY: We don’t mind a little eye roll in the direction of celeb beauty brands 'round here and news just hit that John Legend's getting into skincare 🙃. His unisex brand, called Loved01, will launch 1 Feb and include products between $10 to $15 that “address the unique issues of melanin-rich skin.” He's working with A-Frame, a brand incubator that's also created skincare lines for Naomi Osaka (Kinlò), Gabrielle Union, and Dwyane Wade (Proudly). But, erm, do we really need another celeb skincare line? Hit reply and LMK your thoughts.

Meanwhile, Sephora is reportedly dropping TikTok influencer brands Item Beauty by Addison Rae and Selfless by Hyram Yarbro. Addison has 89M TikTok followers. Hyram has 6M. So, why? Both brands have been losing Instagram followers. Both brands have seen their social media followings drop recently, and some are suggesting they just didn’t connect with the Sephora customers. Creators are also pointing to the challenges of building a loyal customer base on TikTok, which may be better for getting people to discover a brand, but not great for building loyalty.

EQUALITY: It’s official, women CEOs now run more than 10% of Fortune 500 companies for the first time in history. Fortune’s list has been around for 68 years, and for a long time the tally has hovered around 8% women. When one female CEO is appointed, another resigns, and that 10% number has never been hit—until now. Five new women Fortune 500 chief executives started this month, finally bringing the count to 53, and just over 10%. It feels weird to celebrate such a dismal milestone, but it’s at least a small step in the right direction.

Meanwhile, Black founders raised just 1% of all venture capital funds in the US during 2022—an estimated $2.254 billion out of the $215.9 billion in funding last year. That’s a frustrating drop from the 1.3% raised in 2021.

MONEY: A fave for quick facials in New York, Glowbar, just landed a $10 million investment to double its studio count by the end of the year—currently there are six locations in New York and Connecticut. The cash will also go towards leadership headcount and training for Glowbar's 100+ licensed aestheticians. Congrats to founder Rachel Liverman! Go, Glowbar, go.

In other funding news, Mielle cofounder Monique Rodriguez must be celebrating! Her haircare brand, a favorite for textured hair, was just acquired by Procter & Gamble (P&G). Monique recommends other founders who want to follow a similar path be obsessed with their customers, ask for help from experts, and be passionate about your craft.

AMAZON: Cya, copycats! 👋 A recent lawsuit brought to Amazon by Christian Louboutin could mean counterfeit products can't be promoted in ads on the platform. Right now, searching 'Christian Louboutin' on Amazon shows dozens of sponsored listings from other brands selling Louboutin-style red-soled shoes. Louboutin is not asking for money in the court case, only for Amazon to end counterfeiting. If the court rules in the shoe brand's favor, Amazon would need to switch-up how it handles keyword advertising, which currently allows the use of other brands’ names as targeted keywords. This is called ad hijacking or brand poaching.

STITCH FIX: Founder Katrina Lake is temporarily back as CEO at Stitch Fix, the online personal styling service she started in 2011. The company hasn't been having a good time since Katrina stepped down as CEO in 2021: Share prices are down more than 80%, and major layoffs are happening across the business.

SHOPIFY: Glossier and Supreme both recently switched their ecommerce stores to Shopify, part of a movement towards larger brands moving from custom built CMS platforms to Shopify. So, why's this happening now? Shopify earned a reputation as the ecomm platform of choice for startup DTC ecommerce businesses (don’t worry, nothing’s changing for you!), but they've recently made moves to land more enterprise clients with a new product, Commerce Components by Shopify. This is built for large retailers who need multiple systems across their tech stack.

💦 She built a 1,000-person waitlist and sold out at launch

Aishwarya Iyer bootstrapped the launch of her pantry essentials brand, Brightland, in 2018, sourcing oil from family-owned farms in California. They're the olive oil brand with the slick white bottle—you know the one.

Brightland sold out of its inventory within a week of launching and quickly a 1000-person waiting list. Here's how she got that traction and continued building her business.

One of Aishwarya’s first marketing moves was to invest in PR, which landed Brightland a short blurb in the New York Times and helped generate her first orders. But would a similar strategy work now, in 2023? Maybe not.

"This was the end of 2018, so it was less noisy... Founders who are starting companies today ask me, 'Oh, if we do that same strategy, will it work?' I don't know if it would. I think the game has changed."

As the CPG landscape gets more noisy and competitive, Aishwarya recommends new consumer brands stay focused and to stay in their lane.

"Try not to spend too much time looking at what other companies are doing because the playbook keeps changing. The way to actually build soul is to look outside of what everyone's doing."

In the years since launch, partnerships have fueled Brightland's growth. They have partnered with Sweetgreen, Hedley & Bennett and Food52. Aishwarya is a fan of giveaways, producing joint recipes with likeminded cookware brand or food brands, product collaborations, and joint events.

After successfully bootstrapping the launch and reinvesting all revenue at the beginning to fund growth, Aishwarya raised a small angel round in her first year of business. Brightland has since expanded into new products including vinegar and is stocked across more than 700 stores.

👑 8 ecommerce tools powering Mejuri's online store

Matilda Djerf, Selena Gomez, and Bella Hadid are big fans of Mejuri's minimalist gold jewelry, and so are we. The Canadian retailer was one of the original direct-to-consumer brands, filling a gap for accessories sitting somewhere between costume and fine jewelry. 

Scroll on to see Mejuri's ecommerce tech stack and website evolution.

Total website visits in September: 2.1M (increase of 0.433% from the previous month)

Bounce Rate: 37.15%

Average visit duration: 3 minutes, 25 seconds

Average pages viewed per site visit: 3.83

Ecommerce tech stack: Sailthru and Privy for email marketing and popups, Kustomer for messaging and chat, Zendesk for customer support, Attentive for cart and checkout, Foursixty for shopable Instagram and UGC, Yottaa for SEO and optimization, Criteo for engagement and retargeting

Instagram insights: 1.1M Instagram followers, averages 2,200 likes per post, averages 49 comments per post

TikTok insights: 217,100 TikTok followers

Homepage evolution: 2016 vs 2023

🧩 Kaylin Marcotte collabed with artists to sell over 250,000 puzzles and land on Shark Tank

Kaylin Marcotte was the first employee at successful media startup The Skimm, and started puzzling to unplug from work. It gave her the idea for Jiggy Puzzles: frameable, art-focused puzzles highlighting the designs of female artists. She launched with $25,000 in savings. In their first 9 months of business, Jiggy hit $1.6M in sales. Three years later, she’s sold over 250,000 puzzles.

How she cut launch costs: The manufacturer Kaylin wanted to use for her first product run would only take orders of 10,000 units or higher—it wasn't worth staffing their factory for less.

Kaylin could only afford 2,000 puzzles, and negotiated a deal: add Jiggy Puzzles' order to the end of another customer's order, and in return Kaylin would be flexible on when she received the product. The manufacturer agreed, and Kaylin was able to launch on a tight budget.

Once Jiggy Puzzles launched, Kaylin DM’ed influencers and celebrities, and emailed editors to get traction. Then, Covid and lockdowns hit, putting a big spotlight on at-home hobbies in the press and fuelling organic growth in 2020.

How she structures artist partnerships: Kaylin collabs with female artists and showcases their work on her puzzles. Rather than commissioning new work from the artist, Jiggy reduces the risk of each partnership by choosing designs from artists’ existing work and paying above industry average royalties to the creator. Artists usually make $3,000-$5,000 on the first run of product.

Jiggy Puzzles first sold only through the brand's website, but in 2020 landed its first retail stockist: Anthropology, who found Jiggy Puzzles on Instagram. Then an appearance on Shark Tank in 2021 delivered a hit of publicity and a $500,000 investment from Mark Cubin.

In 2022, Kaylin used the investment to focus on wholesale partnerships, corporate gifts, and launching a new membership program and artist marketplace.

Kaylin is particularly clever when it comes to collabs. One collab saw Jiggy partner with music artist Kacey Musgraves to turn her new album's cover art into a puzzle to get fans even more engaged with the new music, in a fun and new way—and open Jiggy up to a new audience at the same time.

Want more tips on bootstrapping your business from Kaylin? Head to her interview on the Female Founder World podcast.