S2 E15: Sergio Tache (Dossier): Carving your own space in an industry

S2 E15 PODCAST

On this week’s episode of Retention Chronicles, we’re joined by Sergio Tache, Founder & CEO of Dossier, the leading perfume brand that is the fair alternative to luxury perfumes. Yaw and Sergio share a background in Investment Banking and have brought those learnings, such as having a strong work ethic and finding a great mentor, into founding their own brands. We also discuss;

  • the large profit margins of the beauty industry,
  • creating more value and giving back to the consumer,
  • how to market scents online,
  • empowering the buyer to make a good decision,
  • influencer marketing,
  • and conveying a story through video.

Be sure to subscribe to our pod to stay up-to-date and checkout Malomo, the leading order tracking platform for Shopify brands.

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TRANSCRIPT

This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

perfume, people, product, brand, buy, purchase, customers, industry, company, perfumery, sample, dossier, important, communication, bottle, super, retention, process, email, investment banking

SPEAKERS

Mariah Parsons, Yaw Aning, Sergio Tache

Mariah Parsons 00:04

Hi there, I'm Mariah Parsons, your host of retention Chronicles, ecommerce brands are starting to shift their strategy to focus on retention in the customer experience. And so we've decided to reach out to top DC brands and dive deeper into their tactics and challenges. But here's the thing, we love going on tangents. And so with our guests, you'll often find us talking about the latest trends, as well as any and all things in the Shopify ecosystem. So go ahead and start that workout or go on that walk and tune in as we chat with the leading minds in the space retention Chronicles is sponsored by Malomo. A shipment in order tracking platform, improving the post purchase experience, be sure to subscribe and check out all of our other episodes at go malomo.com. So hello, everyone, and welcome to retention Chronicles. Today, we are joined by Sergio, I am so excited to have you here today. We are also joined by Yao, our beloved co founder and CEO here at Malomo. And so I would love Sergio for you to say hi, tell us a little bit about your background, your brand, all that good jazz.

Sergio Tache 01:21

So first of all, thank you for having me. Hi, hi to both of you. My name is Sergio Tache, and I'm the founder and CEO of dossier of the shoe company that we started working on in 2018. A little bit about my background, and the previous lifetime, I used to work for investment banking. And which was well a ton. But I wasn't exactly Hudson fulfilled. So then I transited to the E commerce world, especially in the beauty sector. And I started doing that by starting a company in the hair and beauty space, which was an interesting transition going from investment banking to selling hair online. Definitely raised some eyebrows, or my parents are like, Wait, so you have this nice job and a suit. And now you're selling hair on the internet. To me a little bit. So that was definitely an industry transition. But um, that competed, well was self funded, it did well. And then you know, definitely enjoy what I was doing and decided to stay in the E commerce and beauty space. And that's how we got to today. I see. And I've been working on dices since 2018. And we launched in 2019.

Mariah Parsons 02:42

Okay, wonderful. Yeah, I would love to kind of know more about your background and investment banking. Yeah, and I both have backgrounds like formal education in science. And so like, I think, yeah, you'd probably agree that like, maybe there was like, oh, some raise eyebrows like you're going into E commerce, I feel like everyone kind of finds their way into ecommerce somehow, like REITs everyone has a background. Um, so what like learnings like, do you think have transferred over from that background, because I feel like also investment banking is very formalized, which if that is not true, let me know. But I've never been in the industry. But e commerce is kind of the opposite of that, at least in my perception.

Sergio Tache 03:20

I think again, a huge amount of work ethic in investment banking, it's really, really long hours, especially on what we call the private side of doing a lot of m&a deals. Coming home before 11pm At night, did not happen often. So the work ethic you get the rigorous analysis, the training that you get can be helpful in any industry at all. So that's I'll be always be grateful for that. Because I definitely learned a lot by doing that job, it was not an easy job. Getting stuff delivered on time, no matter what the cost is, to your personal health. You know, it's it's, you know, it's got pros and cons, but it definitely taught me a lot in terms of work ethic. Obviously, you do a lot of analysis, and you have to be very rigorous with your presentations and the numbers you show and go through. So I think that's pretty transferable to any industry, not just ecommerce. Yeah, that's why I'd say I'm curious

Yaw Aning 04:27

to see kind of like you like, moving into selling hair online. They're very different career trajectory. How did you even like get into that business?

Sergio Tache 04:37

You know, like a lot of things in life. Um, a little bit of questions, a bit of luck, a little bit, a lot of discussions with other people. So the way it specifically happened for me was one of my good friends back in the day, had and still has a successful online luxury company called Adore Me. And he was praising the virtues of entrepreneurs. Should for a long, long time, look, I'm not sure about other things for me. And finally, you know, I, I pulled the trigger and decided to transit and he, we brainstorm in terms of the idea and he acted as my mentor, I was running the business and he was acting as my mentor. And that's I mean, I could have not have helpful better introduction to the entrepreneurship world, than having somebody could really help you learn the ropes, and avoid countless mistakes you can make when you start a company. So that was crucial. I think that was a really, really important factor in my success in this industry. And if I can recommend to anybody who's starting as entrepreneur, I think the number one advice I would give is, get somebody in the industry going into to mentor you, or at least guide you. Because those pieces of advice are invaluable.

Mariah Parsons 05:59

Yeah, I love that. I was going to ask you about what you would say someone? So I'm glad you answered that question. I think that's awesome. I'm familiar with the Adore Me brand, as well. So I mean, I can only imagine the influence of having a mentor. Yeah, I want to ask you as well, would you say I know, like, our background in Malomo? Is that? Yeah, and our other co founder, Anthony started as a consultancy, so they were helping other brands and like saw the issue in the post purchase space that they were able to thus solve with Malomo. So yeah, would you also attribute kind of like, with mentorship, being able to have maybe like a leg up or have that, you know, evade some common mistakes in like founding your own company?

Yaw Aning 06:46

Yeah. And actually, like Sergio, like, It's very cool to hear your background, I had a similar journey started my career in investment banking, as well. And, and in transitioning into kind of software space, and then the E commerce space, like you don't know what you don't know. And so like, you really need people to help me see around corners and understand like, the problems that you can't anticipate running into. So our, our, our core value, one of our core values is leverage other viewpoints. And it's been pretty impactful to us. Because I think like a lot of times like you can get when you're when you're working on problem, you can get tunnel vision. In a lot of times, I think when you go out and seek other perspectives and advice from people, they help you unlock really quickly on those problems that you've been dealing with. And so mentorship is insanely important, like having, I mean, we've got a board of directors in our company, I've got personal advisors, I'm part of CEO groups, like all of those perspectives help you help you just understand, like, what is important for you to focus on and what is not important for you to focus on.

Sergio Tache 07:59

Yeah, that resonates with me a lot. Because I think you learn so much by talking with other people. And you know, obviously, more senior people, that's great. But also even watching people, you can always gain something and you never know where the next great piece of advice for your life of your career is going to come from. And it's all about listening and integrating them and say, Okay, that makes sense to me, that maybe makes less sense for me. But it's I think it's tremendously important to to go through that process. I always say, I think it'd be very lucky my life. But I also think that to some extent of creating my own luck, and you create the ability to the conversations you have the opportunities, you see and see those opportunities. I'm a firm believer in what you just what you just said. Yeah, absolutely.

Mariah Parsons 08:47

Yeah, I love that. And so how did you take those learnings to then found dasya? No, you said it was in 2018, I believe and then launched in 2019. So can you walk us kind of through that whole process of like getting into the fragrance world? Yeah. And like founding founding dossier?

Sergio Tache 09:06

Yeah. I've always been fascinated from the beginning by the margins in the beauty and fashion industry are something crazy. From the get go I just find particularly interesting and but insane. So my whole career in e Commerce has been geared towards how can we create more value for the customer? How can we create equally good or even better product by just selling it for less and just giving more back to the customer as opposed to having at 90 95% gross margins, which don't make sense to me? That's how we started in the haircare industry, which was a niche industry, but the margins are particularly egregious. I also had a skincare company that took off but not as much as a one two. And that's really what drove me towards the perfume industry. When you and deceit started as a conversation between myself and the person who became ultimately became my first investor just exchanged ideas began going back to listening to other people and getting ideas from other people. And we both knew the the margins in the perfume World War Hi, I didn't realize how higher the world so I talked to that person. But also I did work to realize that there was no trademark on perfume. So that's where the idea of dossier started fermenting in my in my head. And that's how I see a really started. And we're not the first ones to idea there's a whole bunch of micro companies that have this whole cottage industry around this concept. And if you are from New York City, you'll be very familiar with a street called Canal Street. So all you have to do is go there to understand that there's a whole cottage industry around this concept, among other things on that street. But we want to take a completely different approach, we want to create a great product. So typically, the these these small companies tend to be very focused on price, not necessarily on quality, they tend to manufacture the perfumes in countries that don't really have a manufacturing expertise and perfume. Again, very focused on trying to sell at the lowest price possible. And we want to take an opposite approach. Our first desire was to create a great product. So we manufacture in France in the southern part of France, in this village called grass, which is really the mecca of perfumery, we are very focused on the quality of our product, it didn't matter how much it cost us to make that product, we just want to create a great perfume that helps them doesn't cost a lot of money, quick, great perfume. So obviously, you can still sell for a great price with that without killing our margins. We also want to remove some of the nasty ingredients that tradition perfumery had. And sometimes to have the perfume. So that was important to us too. But overall, the overarching idea was how can we create a great perfume and sell for much more affordable price than what traditional perfumery sells the prices for so our product started $29. And you will be hard pressed to go to Sephora to find a perfume, that's going to start great, it's going to cost less than 80 or 100 bucks, but it's gonna be very, very hard for you. And if you go into the great news brands like Tom Ford, creed, etc. They sell the perfumes that 250 $300 plus, which is gonna be great products, but insane margins when you think of it. And so we want to make great perfumery accessible for the 9%. That was important to us. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.

Mariah Parsons 12:51

No, go ahead. Yeah.

Yaw Aning 12:53

So like when you were launching the business? So like, did you have like define target market that you were like, I mean, the 90 the other 99% of books that want accessible? Perfume is still a very large kind of broad audience, like did you go any more niche than that, like when you're when you're starting the business and going to market?

Sergio Tache 13:14

I think in the very beginning of the process, you just think about the product, I said, you identify an opportunity inside yourself, okay, this does not make any sense. We can produce great perfumes that inspired by luxury scents and sell them for way less. So we started with that. And then we really focused on the quality of production to produce our first batch that would be of good quality. And then obviously in the meanwhile, well that's where we start but obviously meanwhile starting okay, how can we market this? And we, you have some assumptions. So some hypotheses and you test them and then you realize some of them are correct some domain correct. So for example, we knew that selling perfume online is not the easiest business in the world, by definition, because you cannot smell anything intimate. It sounds silly to say but it's true. How do we market this beginning? And what are the people who are the people who are going to be the most susceptible to buy perfume online? So quickly, we said to ourselves, I think our best initial target is going to be people who discover beauty online, or comfortable buying beauty products online and comfortable buying perfume online. So the demographic is probably going to be your 20 to 35 year old twin 20 to 40 year old person. And we also had a strong hypothesis is that these kind of people discovered beauty not in traditional media but online and especially on YouTube. So we have a strong bias towards YouTube, which we feel is a A criminally underutilized platform for any beauty company. So that was our initial hypotheses and turned out to be true. Our hypothesis was, well, in the US, traditionally, men don't use perfume or cologne as much as a woman. So our initial collection was very geared towards women. So we started off with 20 machines, and 15 of those were female and five of those were male. Turns out that was wrong. There was actually some strong interest from from men to avoid the trap of fumes. So we very quickly when we increase that category, we really try to rebalance that. So right now, we have about 85 perfumes and 1/3 is female 1/3 is men and one of those is unisex. unisex is also a huge and a huge developing category within the perfume industry.

Mariah Parsons 15:58

I have like Go ahead questions. I saw it coming

Yaw Aning 16:06

so as I love that, it's a perfume. This is like the one thing I was like really excited to ask you about so like, growing up, I have like these vivid memories of like going to the department stores around the Christmas time that's like usually when I bought my cologne particularly because it's on sale. And you the like the the human aspect of like buying cologne or perfume is like you said, you gotta go and smell it is sprayed on the sticks, right and you walked it in here in your nose. And when you find that when you find that particular scent that you like, like you're almost like, like irrationally brand loyal, this person perspective maybe that's very different for a lot of people. So I've always by Davidoff cool water, and sorry Davidoff cool water. Yeah. Water. Yeah. And so like, whenever I wasn't at the mall, I needed to pick it up like at CVS, like they don't let you spray. So like mentally, I'm just like, I know, I love this scent. So I'm just gonna always stick to this. And unless I can try a different one. Um, I feel like I know the answer to this. But I'd love to hear like, how did you get around that from an online perspective? Like, how did you make that connection like you because you're not shipping out samples for people to like, smell where they buy, like, try before they buy it? Or you

Sergio Tache 17:26

know, we don't? That's something we thought about. So there's two questions that really resonate with me. One is your buying experience. And you knew you like that perfume. And you really, there's something almost irrational magic. But when you smell perfume that you like, like, Oh, my God, this is amazing. It's the it's like a magical experience like euphoria.

Mariah Parsons 17:49

Yeah, yeah. This is, yeah. So

Sergio Tache 17:53

then your decision process becomes very easy. Because one, these perfumes tend to cost a lot of money. And to like that mushroom. So why would you change? So for a long, long time, people had this concept of signature sense, you know, this is my set. This is who, why. And little by little people, especially the younger generation tend to shy away from that. They want to discover the perfumes, they want to smell the stuff, they want to have different perfumes for different occasions, you're not going to wear the same perfume at work versus going out with your friends, you want to have that portfolio and diversification. And it's kind of hard to do. That the scanning process is difficult when your average great quality perfume costs $150. Plus, you go to Sephora, you want to buy three perfumes or some you have a 500 bill, you know, not everybody can afford that. Some lucky few people can, but most people can't. So I think that's what that's one of the key elements of the success of dice is that we enable that discovery process. Now you're buying a bottle that costs $29. It's like a break back for you. And you can try several perfumes. And actually people buy on average, between two and three products, because they want to go through to that discovery process. And the link to that, obviously, is, as I'm sure you know, we have an incredibly easy return process. So going back to your sampling question, which I think is a crucial one. One, the first question we ask ourselves is, how can we make sure people want to buy our products? How can we incentivize them? So initially, we thought a lot around the sampling. And traditionally, perfume companies online have what they call a sample set. They can buy for cooler, 20 bucks and you At what, three 510 samples, more samples, you can try the different machines, and then you can use, you get a $20 coupon to come back and purchase the final of the, quote unquote real product. So the 50 ml bottle, the 100 ml bottle. And that wouldn't make sense for a company that sells perfume for a lot of money, because you're not going to fork out that amount of money, you're going on a whim, they're gonna pay 150 bucks online for perfume never smelled. For us, you know, this is getting more into, I guess, financial strategy. But for us, it didn't make sense to sell a sample set of 2030 bucks, when the perfume itself cost 20 bucks. That Delta wasn't worth it for us and just brings complications to the process. So what we decided to do is initially was to say, look, we're gonna, you're gonna buy the final product, you're gonna buy the 50 ml bottle inside there, there's gonna be a small sample, try to sample on. If you'd like that sample, then you can use the bottle and you can use the perfume, etc. So that's the initial way we got through that, to that. That way people can feel reassured again, the return process is very easy. I have a sample I can try. If I don't like it, I just send it back. No questions asked. Great. And then what we realize is a couple of things. One, the return process, getting that product back, if they don't like it was not as easy as we thought for us. Because we have to refurbish the product, we have to put another sample there, the insert card will be busted, the box will be broken, whatever. Number two, you know, that little sample bottle was made of plastic, which we try to shy away from as much as we can. So then we went back to the drone was like, okay, what can we do? And then we just started with this, like, why not just we were confident a product. We know it's great quality. We're just gonna say, You know what, just buy the product or just send it with a send to you. Try it on as much as you want. If you don't like it, written to us, no questions asked whether it's open or not with a youth Hofland doesn't matter, just returned to us. And it made our lives much simpler. In May the customers even more reassured that we believe in our products. And also we said to them, Look, these bottles, we're not going to trash them doesn't make sense. We're going to give them to, we're going to give them to charities. I think that resonated to the customer. So we made it the same process is frictionless return process, frictionless. And we do you know, another modest way, some good to the world.

Mariah Parsons 22:52

That's awesome. I'd love that so much. I did see the like, easy returns process on your SS website. And I think that makes a lot of sense when I'm thinking about buying something online, especially like perfume, and I love that you touched upon like, I totally fall into that market where I want to have a bunch of perfumes like I have at least like eight right now that I just like cycled through. But then like my mom, she she's like Yuyao where she's like she I think I don't even know how old she was, but like found her scent. And that's it. Yeah, it was like she was like, I've never looked back. But me I'm like, oh, like and even. It's funny because she'll like buy me perfumes and she's like, I think you'd love this. But I'm like, why wouldn't you try it yourself? So it's a whole thing. But I totally think that getting over and like having that reassurance that you said to the customer of like, we're so confident in our product, we think that you'll love it. But if you don't like no, there's no issue just send it back and we'll give it to charity. I think that's amazing.

Yaw Aning 23:53

Yeah. superpower lowers the barrier to entry to like, like that. I think everybody's in this mindset of like, Man, I don't know if I should buy from this brand I just discovered, I don't know, especially in in the products that you sell. And we really going to love this thing. I think that's super powerful messaging just very frictionless to try things.

Sergio Tache 24:16

Yeah. You have to because, like we said initially because obviously online so you got to make sure that it's as frictionless as possible and risk free as possible for for the end consumer.

Mariah Parsons 24:33

Yeah, I think that resonates a lot with us also, like making something frictionless like I know, that's as a company like a goal of ours like that's where our background is. So that I think that like either from a consumer point of view or just like a brand point of view is it helps all parties involved, you know?

Yaw Aning 24:53

How so then you mentioned like, okay, target audience is is, you know their beauty so they discuss Over beauty products on video platforms like YouTube, it's been a really great channel for you all. How do you how do you leverage video and YouTube in your marketing to acquire customers?

Sergio Tache 25:12

So we're strong believers in influencer marketing. And I at least have been doing influencer marketing for a long time. Even before it was a fancy term. Before the term influencer marketing didn't even exist when we started doing that. And we're also big believers, it wasn't the believers in the video format. Like just to give you an example, imagine a Instagram post with an influencer, holding a bottle like this, or whatever, with very little explanation that doesn't do justice to a product is she trying to push or promote the clothing, the bottle makeup, it's very unclear whether in a video format, you have the time to tell a story. And you have time to explain the product and people video is extremely powerful, powerful tool. So that's why we strongly believe in video, whether it's YouTube and Tik Tok, and to some extent, you know, Instagram stories, we have strong bias towards that. So we will work with influencers on those platforms first, because they can tell that story. And to give you a sense, last year, I think there was about 15,000 piece of content that talks about dossier in some form or fashion. So when I say we're believers in prospecting, we really are believers in influencer marketing. And we work a lot with influencers on the small to medium size. We don't necessarily work with really large influences. That's something we're working towards. Little by little. Sorry, I forgot the initial question.

Yaw Aning 26:58

Like how do you Yeah, I mean, you actually answered a lot of that but but how do you leverage YouTube and video to like, really? Yeah, in your marketing and drag people to action? Because I feel like the the perfume industry in general has used that tactic for decades, right like Chanel and Dior, right? Whenever you're watching a commercial about a fragrance, it's not really about the fragrance. It's like many like soap opera is this story that like evokes this like feeling or experience? I'm almost wondering like, is there a new age version of that, that you all are doing to that, like, inspires people to action? And yeah, I'm curious, like, what why do you think video works for you in like, what are you doing that you think is working?

Sergio Tache 27:42

So I think this goes beyond what you just asked? I think it's super interesting question. And it goes beyond just the influencer marketing part. Just to finish on the influencer marketing side. The way we work with them is that there are some, some key messages that we want to get across. And we will be very specific about that. But how they get those key messages across depends on them. Their creators, they know their audience. If you try and script them too much, it's going to feel scripted, it's not going to work. It needs to be their voice transmitting these three key points, whatever those points are, and we're fumbling with that and we work with a variety of influences. When not when not very specific in terms of okay, it needs to be this Kenny just kind of atmosphere. Not everybody likes perfume, or at least a lot of people like perfume. We're very comfortable working with a large variety of influences. Now going back to what you just said, which is super interesting, what kind of message we're trying to convey. And that's something we thought about from the get go. We always felt that luxury perfumery was this very aspirational and accessible industry with all that aspiration. You know, the typical Dolce Gabbana ad is like, some super messy guy with a half naked woman on a beautiful beach somewhere watching Amana.

Mariah Parsons 29:18

Conveniently they have a bottle of perfume on the beach.

Sergio Tache 29:22

Because everybody knows that. So that we want to be the opposite of that. And by the way, don't get me wrong. These are fantastic brands. We're nobodies compared to the Chanel's endorsing Boswell. They're extraordinary brands, but we wanted to not be that we want to be a much more warm, accessible brand. There's a big component of education and what everything we try to do. So just to give you an example, if you look the names of our products, it's not like no smoking tonight or whatever crazy name we can come up with. It's more it's all But the ingredients, you know, floor Marshmallow, got it, you know, every single name is constructed with the fact of family, and then the main ingredient, that perfume. And it goes again to do that education discovery process. For the longest time, before I started in this industry, I had no idea but the ingredients of the notes that went to perfume. Now I realize actually I like I like, touch of ginger microphones. I know, it sounds silly, but I didn't know that before. So we try to really develop that educational aspect to to things. And what we want, when you buy perfume from dossier is that I want you to feel empowered, educated, I feel like you made a smart decision. And you should buy this machine, that's great. And if you didn't, at least didn't buy at least you feel empowered and educated. That's something that's important to us, you get to understand the industry better, and you make a choice that works for you with that education. And you know, like everything, it's we're not there yet. It's still a work in progress. But that's really something that drives us. You know, the communication website or social media, etc. Yes.

Yaw Aning 31:15

So, one, one interesting thing that like you touched on there, the education piece. So when I when I was visiting your website to you this is this is subtle, and I'm curious to hear like the I don't know maybe the rationale behind it. But like with each with each fragrance, you had a little like byline underneath that's inspired by like giving cool water inspired by popular center fragrance, which I think is like super smart because it instantly connects in the buyers mind what I what I have an understanding of to what this new thing is. And like, I think that's a very powerful but subtle, like educational tool in a very small moment of time. What, like, is that been key to your strategy?

Sergio Tache 32:15

Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's been very important for us for many aspects, so what we're not shy about the fact that our products are inspired by luxury scents, and they will smell very close to what the original scent smells like. And that's something we're proud of, and we would communicate around. Because again, we want to give the opportunity to the 99% and everybody really, to have access to great perfumes. So that's something we communicate around. It's been, I think, very effective for us. So we we don't we don't bombard a website about this. But we definitely mentioned because I think it helps the consumer understand what kind of product we're selling, and helps guide that decision, that purchase process. So yeah, it's been it's been, it's been important for us both on the website in terms of communication, that helps, you know, it helps frame the purchase decision.

Mariah Parsons 33:21

Yeah, I love that you like take that ownership and like you're proud to be associating or like, like, proud to have your own space. Right. I think that's so cool that you're able to carve out. You know, like, we know that there are luxury products out there, but like, that's not us. Right. And like it goes back to what we were saying about the Dolce and Gabbana like on the beach, right? Like, they do their thing. And it's amazing, right? We're talking about it right now. But to be able to then, like pivot and really make your own brand. That's what stands out to me. So I love that you said like, was it empower education and then like being confident about the decision?

Sergio Tache 33:59

decision? You feel like you made a smart decision. Okay, yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Sweet. So it's a little bit like the tune example. Great brand, at least I love is the ordinary same thing. You when you buy something from the ordinary, you think, okay, I made a great decision. I'm well educated, understand the ingredients that actually need my skin to look great. And I don't have to pay her but great.

Mariah Parsons 34:26

When when when it's exactly yeah, I love that I would love to dive into so like, I know you also were talking about like working with micro influencers, right? So on the smaller to medium size, scale and like UGC and just like marketing strategy retention as a whole. So, we talked a little bit about video already, but I'd be curious to hear so when you're trying to educate your customers we've talked about like before buying so are there any other like strategies that you employ before we I would love to like go into after bye Like, how you're making sure you know your customers know everything that they need to know about your product. But before we pivot to kind of like the post purchase side of things is, are there any other things that you're doing on the pre purchase side, like branding or anything in like the checkout process that you think would be like, great to highlight?

Sergio Tache 35:19

Yeah, there's always 1000 1000 things we try and test and we learn from. So there's the whole UX process of, Okay, let's try this. Let's try that. And you know, a lot of them fail some work. And that's great. And we implement them. But on a high level, the two things aren't flagged there is I've always been a big believer in simplicity. So our website, my impression is that it's a pretty simple website to navigate, you very quickly get the product, you very quickly get to where you need to get. And that's something I've always firmly believe that, you know, always think, okay, homepage, category, page, product page, Add to Cart Checkout. No fluff in the middle. So it needs to be very strict, but I'm a firm believer that. Number two, I'm also a believer in capturing emails and SMS is really far up the process. Because I mean, when you think of it, get 100 people that call on your website, you're lucky if you get three or four people to buy. And then 9697 people, they're gone. That's it. So how can you capture some of their information to continue that conversation is super, super important to me. So that's something I focus on a lot, because it helps us continue that conversation and push them towards that first purchase.

Mariah Parsons 36:48

Right? Are you doing that through like pop ups? Or like yeah, giveaway?

Sergio Tache 36:56

I'm also probably even do basic things well, so pop ups are great. And obviously, we capture the email and the the phone number through those popups. That's really a main source of email and SMS acquisition, there's a floating button at the bottom, that helped the ups do quite a bit.

Mariah Parsons 37:19

Okay, sweet. So with that, then I think there's still like, there's tons of opportunity in the post purchase side to do that as well. So can you walk us through kind of like your whole strategy? After a customer buys from you? What kind of communication? What education? Is the customer or the consumer getting?

Sergio Tache 37:37

Yeah, so all communication of these two emails are based on two things that there's there's what we call flows and campaigns. So flows very traditional. We have some some post purchase flows that we like to push in terms of what you can expect, where your product is, hasn't been delivered, or very, or very classic. And then down the road after 15 days, or I think it's within days, we will send you a float an email that said, Hey, by the way, do you want to post a review of your experience? What do you think of your product? And then, after 3060 90 days, depending you get automatic clothes that start talking about, okay, you bought this product? Or we bought these products? What about this one? Or what about that? Have you thought of now we're going to have candles again, back on our website? Have you still buy candles, so that that definitely helps. But if you think for our specific business, if you think about how people purchase on a company on the website, they tend to buy two or three products. And there's no real correlation between what people buy. So we look at this as really, really carefully this and we couldn't figure out a pattern in terms of what people bought. So obviously, we have some vessels but our bestsellers not a part of our business. So our sales are pretty scattered across various products. So it's it's pretty hard to find time and people just like some perfumes and that's one of the go to buy. So trying to make a correlation between okay, if you buy every saffron automatically we know that you're gonna love this and that's what we're gonna push. It's hard for us to do, but what's important for us and what's important for our customers is that discovery process so the way we generate quite a bit of revenue and post purchase activity is by sending campaigns talking about various subjects it could be okay we got we got this new perfume in good distribution, they came back give me stock, pushing a story or just some educational content around around perfume. They can be the simple Email just talks about, okay, well, these three flow robot price we think are great, or what you wear for summer, etc. Just talking about those is really helpful because what people do is that first of all, they get the products, we're going to try them. And oh, by the way, they actually they smell pretty nice and it's a good quality product, they're not going to wait till the bottles are empty to buy new products. So they tend to buy, again, after 30 to 60 days, there's no there's no way to finish the bottles. But they love they love the perfume. And they've always wanted to discover other products. So they are going to be inspired or encouraged or influenced by the creation we send around other products that are available for us. So we try to adapt our post post purchase marketing or post purchase communication around that fact, it's a lot of discovery. There's not a specific timeline where for example, if you enlarge by so well, you know that after X amount of days, or whatever it is, you probably run out. So you need to buy a new one. That's not how Dawsey works, because this is the whole discovery process of purchasing other products. And by the way, when the repurchase, they buy another two to three products, not just one, and it can be done perfumes.

Mariah Parsons 41:21

Yeah, yeah, that's so cool. I love the highlight on discoverability. And so I know because we talked, we were talking about EGC. And like using videos as a platform, I'm curious, you share, like part of that discoverability process is that getting that those those videos, that video content in front of consumers after they purchase to like showing them being like, Oh, these are a couple of like reviews, you know, in the form from Tik Tok, or YouTube or anything like that, that you're sharing? Is it? Or is it really just putting the product in front of them and letting like having like a blog or something of the sort? Like what is no,

Sergio Tache 41:56

there's definitely that we we try all sorts of all sorts of types of communication. And obviously review is is a big part of it. That's why we're also pretty aggressive about getting those reviews. So in part of the flow is to send in, I think it's two or three emails, I think, oh, SMS is saying, please review for us if you love our product, because we can then use those reviews, across paid advertising, even on our website. You can push that to communicate post purchase communication, you pre purchase, pre purchase communication, yes. So that the types of communication we go through is, is pretty wide. First of all, there's not one one format that fits all. And second of all, I think you need some variety of communication. If it's all about buyer products, that's probably not gonna work, people gonna get bored of it. Yeah.

Mariah Parsons 42:54

Okay, that makes sense. I

Sergio Tache 42:55

think it's really staying front and center in terms of people remaining. And then obviously, there's a whole bunch of work with you around. Okay, who should we send this communication to? How often? That's obviously crucial, because you want to make sure people don't get bored of your analysis, right? That's not the point. That's, that's the really difficult piece where you start thinking about how to segment your audience in a smart way, etc, etc. But that's all that's always a work in progress.

Yaw Aning 43:31

I real quick, my, I imagine like, you are testing thing, you're testing lots of things and like trying to see what is what is driving? Where do you go to get inspired? Or like, Who do you pay attention to? If anybody or any, like, outlet? Or learning resource to like, yeah, level up and stay?

Sergio Tache 43:51

So we have a list of what is it 150 companies that we really like? And you know, you always get, you can't think of everything in house, you always need some form of inspiration. So there's these brands that we love, we get inspiration from terms of design, oh, because that cool feature that's interesting. They build their filter that way. But to think of that, cool, let's try and see if that makes sense for us. Whether it's, you know, color palettes or like you say communication. How are these guys communicating? What kind of what kind of success have they seen with this type of email? So, it's, it's always an ongoing process of learning from others, whether they're specifically in the perfume industry or in you know, adjacent industries like fashion or beauty industries. That's, that's really the best source of inspiration for us and listening to great podcasts. That's always super helpful. On my commute, that's all I do is I listen to podcasts, I listen to audiobooks. That's how you get ideas. It's It's, ya know, it's, you know, a lot of things that we do and not rocket science. It's just again, it's all about, I think, doing the basic things, right? And if you do those basic things, right, you can go a long way. And obviously, it goes without saying having great product, you can be the best marketer in the world. If your products not good, you're not going to go very far. So it all starts with that. Yeah.

Mariah Parsons 45:24

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Do you think so? I love what you said about like, just doing basic things, right? Like, it's not rocket science. And I know, there's a lot of like this time of year around the holiday season, there's a lot of I feel like pressure or just stress in general. And so I think this fits in really nicely. And I wanted to ask you, do you have that same approach for the holidays? Where it's like, we know our like, we know what we're going to do we know our basics, we're going to stick to that during the holidays, the holiday season? Or do you think your strategy changes a little bit, just depending on you know, consumer behavior.

Sergio Tache 46:02

I think at least at our stage of the company, again, it's a lot about getting the basics, right. You know, in any commerce, and especially in perfumery, you're going to be doing a lot of volume, during those crucial six weeks, you probably going to be generating anywhere from 30 to 50% of your annual revenue in six weeks. So it's, you know, you could go and try and figure things out, but it might not be the most wise, the wisest strategy, because he didn't want to get those six weeks were up wrong. That's super important. So you want to get those things, right. So at least my point of view, I'm not saying it's the right way to do things. But my point of view is, we stopped testing, we stopped, we stopped trying new things, it's about getting involved, making sure we're doing, we're communicating a lot. And I always say to the team, Black Friday is the period where branding goes die. So it's, it's all about making sure you get your voice heard, and you get those sales. And you sacrifice a little bit of that, that beauty aesthetic to make sure that people understand you promotions, and people see the value. And there's a lot of noise out there during Black Friday. So it's all about attracting that attention, getting those sales, but then they were business we need to sell. And when so much volume gets processed to know for eight weeks, you cannot get that wrong.

Yaw Aning 47:39

Yeah. And like when you think about that, like that period of time, too. I know a lot of a lot of brands, like they have this existential like struggle between, we're gonna get a lot of one time customers that are leveraging the discount, but we're never going to see them again. And that like profitability margin profile looks very different for those customers. How do you think about that? Like, are you? Is that a period of time were you trying to find those first time customers to drive them to second purchase, like you're looking for the loyal customer base, or it's, we know, we're just going to see a lot of like, one time purchases. And so let's architect our pricing and our offers to make that first purchase profitable.

Sergio Tache 48:20

So I think it's, I think it's a bit of both we have not seen that, you know, cohorts, Nov corps. So people buy for the first time in the month of November, have been bad customers, that has not been experienced. Clearly, they take advantage of discounts to buy way more, it goes without saying. But we see the same cohort building on vehicles then on other types of costs. So that has not been an experience. Obviously, the other costs from the other months of the year. There's always a specter, of course, you're gonna take advantage of the deal of a deal that we offer. But we haven't really seen a huge difference in performance. If we compare the November chord versus other other ones, that's not been our, our issue. It's all about managing the CAC and managing money through that process.

Mariah Parsons 49:23

Yeah. Yeah, I love that you brought up that point. Yeah. And it's very encouraging. I'm sure Sergio that you saw like you haven't seen that November has been like a really big uptick in consumers that you're able to make like me first time customers into repeat purchasers. And this is a notion that I spoke with one of our partners with on another podcast episode and the notion of like, gifts like people buying gifts right during the holidays and so like the customer and the consumer might be different like if you're buying you know, for your I'm buying something for My mother or something, you know, if you're if the dossier emails are going to me, but my mom is the one who's enjoying it, it's like how do you collect kind of both emails or SMS? And we were also talking about collecting those ways of communication. Like that's something that's super. I feel like niche and not a, maybe a not a ton of people are capitalizing on Have you like thought about that at all? Sir, do you have like, how do you get if if you know if something is tagged as on buying as a gift? How do you close that communication gap of like, oh, how am I getting in communication with someone who's actually using the product? Or is that not really worrying? The perfume industry?

Sergio Tache 50:43

Oh, no, it's worry. That it's hard to do. So you can think of, you know, sending emails, how to collaborate, use an email, and then both people get it get a discount if you if you refer a friend, you can think of those things you can think of Okay, have you thought about a friend who liked this? There's all sorts of ways of doing it. We haven't unfortunately, we haven't seen a ton of success. It's hard. It's hard to really scale those things. But again, I would love to hear ideas of other companies that have been doing that pretty successfully. The one thing, the two things that encouraged us is going back to November point is yes, we do see repeat purchase, even though you both Listen, November, I think that speaks to the quality of our product. But going going back to how we can refer more and formalize that more, we see. So we have a post purchase survey. And we were surprised and very encouraged by the fact that about 25% of our about purchases, were referred by friends, which I thought which I thought was just Yeah, it's it's encouraging. It could be which obviously could be way more growing very fast. So we're getting a lot of a lot of people come to the to the door to traditional marketing methods blast, that was good thing, but formalizing that I think is is an essential piece. And I have to say I have not come up with a great solution just yet that can be really scaled up. Have you seen Have you seen those companies that do that? Well, I'm curious.

Mariah Parsons 52:29

I so we were I can ask honestly, the partner that we were speaking with if if they had a brand in mind of who they were addressing or seen it done well, but they I just heard it more as like a notion like this is something that in the future maybe people will work towards. But I haven't had any direct, you know, direct brands telling me directly like this has worked super well for us. Yeah, have you? I'm trying to think I know. I'm like I pose the question. And I'm like, brands that come to mind are?

Yaw Aning 53:03

Yeah, I know. So there's a brand called Flamingo est. That they they push this really hard. They're like a very well designed brand. And like I think they they rely a lot on word of mouth. And I think they do they do to get them on as I don't I'll have to ask them to like, Are there any specific tactics that they're using? That seems to be more successful than others? But the classic? I know they're doing the classic like refer friend, both of you get a discount on the purchase or

Sergio Tache 53:39

after thinking about that, why not? I mean, it's a huge, it's a huge point. I mean, it's it's something that's really important. I mean, at least I haven't seen a solution that works really well. Beyond the good old fashioned. What's your mouth?

Mariah Parsons 53:57

Well, definitely have to follow up with you on that. Because I think it's a great question. And maybe we found a pocket where it's like, oh, there's some some investigation to see what other brands are doing in that space. But I know we're coming up on time. So I want to be respectful, of course of everyone's troubles. Oh, no, you want to say yeah. We could just talk for hours and hours.

Sergio Tache 54:20

No, it's been a great conversation.

Mariah Parsons 54:22

Yeah, thank you for coming on. I know you and I were both super pumped about this episode and getting to meet and chat with you. So thank you, you know, this is this is what like we love to do our bread and butter. So thanks.

Sergio Tache 54:34

Thank you very much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Yaw Aning 54:36

Thank you!