#425 – Creating a Canine Empire: Innovative Strategies for Growing a Pet Brand with Julie Napolitano
Join me as I sit down with Julie Napolitano, a dedicated pet lover and entrepreneur who has carved out a unique path in the pet industry with her Amazon private-label dog brand. Listen in as Julie recounts her transition from a corporate career to launching her own direct-to-consumer business on Shopify, driven by a passion for providing quality products for pets. We’ll explore her experiences with innovative financing methods, including bootstrapping and securing grants, and discuss the pivotal role that events like the 7-Figure Seller Summit in Japan and the Market Masters Think Tank have played in shaping her journey.
In this episode, Julie shares the trials and triumphs of launching her brand, Pup Wax, on Amazon and the lessons learned from navigating the platform’s complexities. From participating in Target’s pet accelerator program to addressing the challenges of product compliance, Julie’s story is a testament to persistence and adaptability. We’ll discuss the importance of building trust with pet parents and the unique marketing strategies needed to stand out in the competitive pet supplement market.
Finally, Julie reflects on the transformative impact of expert think tanks and the value of networking at in-person events. Her journey underscores the significance of building meaningful relationships and the benefits of continuous learning and adaptation in business. As we wrap up, we’ll highlight Julie’s latest achievements, including her product launch on Nordstrom’s national online platform, and discuss the importance of pursuing goals with passion and creativity. Don’t miss this inspiring conversation that celebrates the power of resilience and community in entrepreneurship.
In episode 425 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Julie discuss:
- 00:00 – Julie Napolitano’s Pet Brand Journey
- 06:18 – From Shopify To Amazon
- 12:36 – Innovative Calming Dog Toy Development
- 12:45 – Bonding With Dogs in Modern Society
- 18:48 – Trend of Pet Adoption and Bonding
- 21:28 – Marketing Challenges in Pet Industry
- 24:20 – Marketing Strategies for Pet Owners
- 27:35 – Amazon Brand Funding Strategies
- 29:02 – Bootstrapped Entrepreneur Secures Multiple Grants
- 30:53 – Tory Burch Fellowship Program Benefits
- 36:34 – Business Growth Through Market Masters Think Tank
- 42:56 – Product Success and Future Planning
- 45:44 – Networking Benefits Beyond Virtual Events
- 47:45 – Trade Show Discussion and Retail Opportunities
- 50:55 – Kevin King’s Words Of Wisdom
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 425 of the AM/PM Podcast. My guest this week is Julie Napolitano. Julie is a huge pet lover and has a dog brand that she’s been doing for five years. So we discuss the challenges of actually competing in the pet space, what it took for her to get to where she’s at and some very interesting ways she’s actually financed this business Some ways that are not talked about a whole lot, and then also the advantages of actually participating in, like the Market Masters think tank. I think you’ll get a lot of value from this episode some actionable tactics. So enjoy my talk with Julie. Julie Napolitano, how are you doing? Good to have you on the AM/PM Podcast.
Julie:
Thanks for having me, Kevin. Nice to see you.
Kevin King:
Nice to see you again, I think. We met in, I think, for the first time. What was it in Japan right?
Julie:
Yeah at Gary’s Seven Figure Seller Summit in Okinawa.
Kevin King:
We’re a handful of people that decided to actually go to Japan for a small little Japanese event in Okinawa. What made you actually I mean, you’re based in the East Coast of the US what made you decide? Was Japan just something that, hey, I’ve always wanted to go to Japan, this is a good excuse, or what was it that? Were you looking to expand to Japan at the time, and what was the reason for us taking that time and money to head over there?
Julie:
So the opportunity to expand into Japan sounded really interesting. So this was last April, but I was still quite new to Amazon. I had only launched in December 2022. So for me it was really an opportunity. To get into the room with a bunch of sellers who’ve done this a lot longer than I have, you know, whether it’s Japan or talking US or other markets just sounded like an amazing opportunity in a really intimate environment to kind of you know, network and get to know people and understand how you know everybody that’s actually figured it out is getting it done.
Kevin King:
What did you get different from it than what you expected?
Julie:
It’s all about the relationships and that’s what you get at these really small, intimate events that you just don’t get at these giant conferences where you’re meeting dozens of people in a day, and that, I think, just definitely surpassed any expectation I had going in. Like I imagined I’m going to show up in a conference room in Japan with a notebook, you know, take a lot of notes, learn a lot of things, meet some cool people. But the relationships that you build when you’re in a small setting with people just like one-on-one, for a couple of days or a week, whatever it is, you can’t replicate that anywhere else. You don’t get that by dialing in on zoom, you definitely don’t get that, you know, just sitting next to people at accelerate um, it’s really an awesome experience. I met you there, obviously, um, I met, you know, a bunch of other people there, um, and then you know very similar at the Market Masters event that you put together in Austin. Um, that was absolutely life-changing. That was kind of taking that sort of a setting to the next level and just having people who are there because they’re after the same thing that you are and they’re there to help you. You know, if they’re the experts that were brought in. You just don’t get that anywhere else.
Kevin King:
So you said you started selling on Amazon in 2022, but you were selling on your own site or somewhere else before that right?
Julie:
Yes, so I launched DTC Black Friday 2019, actually, so just about five years ago. Prior to that, my experience was all corporate, so almost 20 years mostly in financial markets. I had no experience in entrepreneurship, product development, marketing, supply chain any of the things that you really need to understand to succeed in building a CPG business, a brand. That was just all new for me. So I had an idea in 2019. So I was fostering a couple of dogs. One of them had very dry paws and I thought, oh, let me just go buy something for him. And I checked the labels for everything. So, whether it’s shampoo or snacks, food for the house that comes in, I’m looking at the ingredients and there just wasn’t anything in the market that was really clean where I felt like, okay, this makes sense to buy for a dog. So I felt like there was an opportunity and I set out to create something better. So at the time, I was still working full-time in my corporate life, so nights and weekends, I started with the research on the ingredients. So I was literally reading the veterinary journals through my alumni access. Like had spreadsheets going of which ingredients seemed good, which ones seemed bad. Lots of nights and weekends in the kitchen I was melting ingredients down. I didn’t have a commercial kitchen, so this was just all me on my own and came up with a formula that just seemed like it would be really good, based on everything that I’d read. The ingredients were amazing very clean label and it worked and I went to market with that Black Friday of 2019. And that’s pretty much how I started on Shopify.
Kevin King:
Why did you go Shopify? Is that just what you had stumbled on YouTube, or that’s all you knew at the time? Or why Shopify and why didn’t you go to Amazon at that time?
Julie:
So initially I was very intentional about avoiding Amazon and I, you know, seen some of the stories about founders just kind of getting screwed one way or the other. Just you know it can be a very tough, brutal environment to succeed in and I said, you know, I’m not going down that road, I’m absolutely not going to Amazon, I’m going to do this on my own. I’m going to build a website, focus on SEO, to drive the traffic. And that’s what I did and it really for the first couple of years started to grow pretty slowly. But I started to connect with other founders through different accelerators and incubators and hear of their successes that they were having on Amazon. And one of them we did a screen share and he was showing me actually Helium 10 and he showed me behind the scenes the data that he was looking at and I realized the opportunity is a lot more. I guess it’s a lot more calculated, the risks that you’re taking than I realized. At the time, It felt like Amazon to me was just this jungle and it was very arbitrary. You may make it or you may get screwed, but you can really shape the opportunities that you create for yourself by doing that research upfront, the product research, the platforms that were there to support those go-to-market strategies. I just wasn’t familiar with any of that existing prior to that. So, having that introduction from founders that were already doing that, I thought, okay, there’s really something here. And then 2022, I attended Accelerate virtually and I participated in all the little webinars and started to learn a lot more about it. And that was the winter that I went live on Amazon. So I kind of took those sessions to figure out like, okay, here’s how I built a listing, this is what A-plus content is, and so forth, and so I launched that December.
Kevin King:
So on your DTCs, on your Shopify site, you just had the Paul cream, or did you initially, and then you added some additional products later, or how did that work?
Julie:
Great question. So yeah, so when I launched, it was just so. It was Pup Wax was the name of it and it was clean skincare for dogs. I was doing that the first couple of years Spring 2021, I was in Target’s first pets accelerator. It was called Target Takeoff Pets and that was basically an educational program. They had 10 of us founders globally that they brought in for all kinds of education sessions and just understanding how to enter mass retail, what a buyer is looking for. That was my first exposure to mass retail. So prior to that, like I said, completely different background, didn’t really know anything about retail. The biggest takeaway there was that the buyer said, in order to bring a brand in, they really need a whole assortment. They’re not going to bring in a single SKU with a couple of variants. So from that program, at the end of that program, I didn’t have a placement on shelf. We mutually agreed it’s much too early. I hired a market researcher and we spent five months doing one-on-one user interviews, um, so we interviewed pet parents across the US and Canada for five months. You know, just really understanding their pain points, their unmet needs.
Kevin King:
In person or in Zoom?
Julie:
This is all zoom. This was 2021, um, and then at the end of that, we followed up with the survey to over a thousand dog parents um also US and Canada to really make sure that we understood what we thought our findings were and that those were the real takeaways and that market research is really how the roadmap for the next brand was born. So my current brand, Puppington, really evolved out of that. So Pupwax was kind of that first iteration and then I pivoted, rebranded and launched Puppington in February 2022.
Kevin King:
And with what additional products?
Julie:
Yep. So the learning, the focus there was really just the biggest pain point for pet parents at that time was really navigating their dog’s anxiety, helping dogs deal with their anxiety, figuring out how to manage that as a pet parent, and so I decided that that would be the focus for the brand. So it was calm pups, happy humans and everything that we can do to support pet parents on their journey. So the main product I launched with a few products so calming chews for dogs, like supplements for dogs, calming toys, calming beds and so forth, and then the one that really took off when I first launched on Amazon was the dog shoes so calming, it was ultra calming pet shoes. I worked with a veterinarian on those and we, you know, went through all of the same kind of market research making sure that we had something that worked, that was effective. It was CBD free, it was THC free, but it had, you know, magnesium, valerian root, chamomile, all of these calming ingredients and I thought, wow, this is great, this is really going to work. People loved it initially and then it sold out. The first month or so. Sales were doing really well on Amazon. This was coinciding with my launch. And then boom, Amazon delisted the product and I was still brand new as a seller. I was like two months into my Amazon journey, so I really didn’t understand how to navigate something like that the way I would today. So here I am. I had just launched, I maxed out a credit card buying more inventory and then, boom, delisted. So they said that it was violating. So because of the ingredient of, because of the inclusion of hemp seed meal, they said that it’s not compliant for sale in the state of Idaho, which was not correct. Hemp seed meal actually was, like, deregulated by the Farm Bill Act of 2018. Like, it’s no longer a regulated ingredient, you can buy hemp seed meal. You can buy hemp seed oil any sort of hemp seeds, literally for salad, since 2018.
Julie:
But you know it took me until July of that year to get the product reinstated and if I had known then what I know now about you know how much of those. You know restrictions are actually just, you know bots that are flagging something and you just need some human intervention to take a look and understand. You know there are hundreds of other, if not thousands of other, hemp seed products on Amazon because there are not actually restrictions around their sale. But again, at the time I didn’t know. So that killed my launch, destroyed the product, as you can imagine, not just the months without sales, but then coming back and having no sales velocity, and I wasn’t really able to recover it. So while all of that was happening-
Kevin King:
How did you get it back? What did you do to get it back? Just keep at them? Keep contacting them, or do you end up hiring somebody to help you?
Julie:
I just kept at it, but it took me a lot longer than it should have because I did not understand how much automation there was, I think, behind the scenes. So I thought you know someone at a very high level and risk is actually taking a look at this and perhaps they need a month or whatever it is to like look into this. So when I would get a reply back, initially it was not obvious to me. You know, in time, after a couple of months of this, it becomes obvious that these responses are canned and they’re automated, and you know. But I just didn’t have that knowledge at the time. So eventually it came back up and it was just the result of a few months, of several months, of me pushing back every time going back. But in the meantime I said I can never be this exposed to a single product ever again and so I started to build out the brand and kind of expand into other areas that had a little less risk when it comes to an item being perishable or an item being subject to the whims of a taste of a dog or a human. So I moved more into textiles after that.
Kevin King:
I know you sent me one of your more recent products. I just recently lost my dog, Zoe, but she loved playing with a little. It’s like a little ball, like a little soft ball, and I would hide treats in there and she would go in there and push it all over the floor and like paw at it and I’d take little treats and tear them in half and stick them all throughout there and she loved that toy. What gave you the idea for that? Did that come out of these focus group studies or did you see an opportunity, like on Helium 10?
Julie:
Yep, yeah, so that you know and, by the way, thank you for sharing the videos of her playing with that. She was so precious and just really sorry for your loss. She was, she was really adorable. Yeah, so that that came out of just really wanting to build out the brand around calming products for dogs, so that was designed to be a calming toy. You know, I think Zoe just probably loved it because she loved it. But some dogs who really really have a hard time settling down, you know it really is doing scent work helps to soothe them, helps to calm them down and also keeps them busy for a long time, especially when they’re indoors and so being able to sniff out the treats. So, yeah, you know, I felt like that was a cool product. My dog at the time loved it and I thought, yeah, let me do something with this.
Kevin King:
You said earlier you foster dogs. Do you also have dogs, or you had a dog, or—
Julie:
Yep. So I have two dogs right now. They are each four years old, both pandemic pups. We got the first one, Rusty, when he was 10 weeks old and he had incredibly high anxiety. We worked with three different trainers and two of them said you know, he’s one of the most extreme cases that they’ve ever worked with. So it’s really, really, really challenging. And we were also advised not to get another dog, to keep all of our attention on him and you know, we would socialize him, we would take him to the doggy daycares and he was definitely happier around other dogs. So when he was five months old that October, I said I think he needs a playmate. And so, against everyone’s advice, the advice of all the trainers, we found Coco, who is a super street smart rescue. She was found living on her own in Mississippi really sad story, but she’s just super street smart. Whatever she got out of those early months, she is an escape artist, she’s super confident and when she’s around Rusty is like a different person, like a different dog. He just is totally relaxed. And the second that she’s gone like if she’s gone because she hopped the fence, which she does he just like loses it. He really needs her by his side to stay calm and so.
Kevin King:
What kind of dogs are there?
Julie:
They’re both hound mixes. Rusty is 50% treeing Walker Coon Hound and then the rest we don’t know. We only know because one of his litter mates was DNA tested and the rest was this big mix and Coco seems to be a red bone hound mix.
Kevin King:
It’s so important what you said there like you got him at 10 months. A lot of people I think that are don’t understand dogs or maybe they just they have dogs as pet but they don’t really focus on them is those first six to eight weeks after they come off their litter. I mean, they mean usually you can separate a dog and a puppy in about eight weeks, but the next six to eight weeks are so critical in a dog’s life and a lot of people, I think, don’t understand that. A lot of dog owners don’t understand that when they get a new puppy it’s like oh, look at the cute puppy. Okay, we got to potty train it, we got to do a few things. But that time is the most critical for shaping its personality, shaping its demeanor, shaping its habits, everything beyond just training. And that’s why I’m planning on getting a new dog soon and I’m making sure that I’m not doing any travel for almost two months because I want to spend that time. That’s when you bond with it and I take the dog. I did this with Zoe. I took her, like you said. You took her to doggy daycare to socialize them with other dogs. I did extensive training, like four to six hours a day, probably of me, you know, not all in one whack, but you know 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there, because the dog’s attention doesn’t, can’t do that.
Kevin King:
And then I exposed them to every kind of surface, like let’s go walk on gravel, let’s go rock on grass, go rock on concrete, go rock on everything. I try to take them to every type of person old person, young person, black person, Hispanic person, Asian person, whatever. Expose them to men, women, all different sizes, and then expose them to all kinds of other environmental things like scooters and bicycles and skateboards and whatever. And I think that makes a huge difference and if you spend that time it’s like raising a kid in some ways, but you spend that time really concentrating on them. I think that you’re going to be a lot happier and you get a totally different type of pet and dog down the road for the next 10, 15 years. Do you agree with that?
Julie:
I could not agree with you more, and that’s actually one of the things that’s unfortunate about Rusty’s situation. So we got him in May of 2020. So just two months into the pandemic, we didn’t really know what was going on. Still, we were still wearing like masks and, I think, bringing in groceries with gloves, and so he was socialized with dogs but not with people, because we were not really around people. Like you would see people in the parks, on the trails. Everyone had masks on, though at the time. Still, um and so even now you know he doesn’t have that same comfort with people he doesn’t know, um that he would have if he had been socialized with other humans the way that you just described. Um, he didn’t get to experience that. And then the other thing with Rusty is so we know his whole story because he was actually born in foster care, so his mom was being fostered. When she had him and the rest of the litter he was the runt of the litter, so he was basically being completely rejected by her and the way that dogs are with the runt. He suffered from that and so I think that definitely shaped how he has turned out and what his personality is now. You know everything that he’s gone through in those first couple of months of his life, even before we had him.
Kevin King:
I think it’s. I was reading something recently dogs in society. In the United States they’re like the number one pet and they’re part of it. They become part of the family and they’re not just. To some people, a dog is a farm animal. It’s like stays outside, go chase the sheep. To other people, it’s a substitute for a child. I read something that a lot of younger people in their 20s now a lot of them are not getting married or they’re not even really having serious relationships, but they’re actually adopting pets at a much higher rate. Then you have countries like Korea. South Korea to be specific where dogs are huge. I mean they’re like. I mean we here in Austin Austin’s a very dog friendly city. We have dog bakeries where you actually drive through like a McDonald’s and, like you know, give me two biscuits for the dog and some of the hamburger places. You know they have a little treat thing by the window. You know here’s your hamburger and your fries and oh, you got Fido in there. Here’s a little treat for him. It’s becoming where and that’s really something probably in the last 10 to 20 years where that’s really started to explode. It’s always kind of been there a little bit, but it’s really started to explode. What do you think that reason is? That people are in certain societies are starting to bond a lot more with their dogs especially. I mean cats too to some degree, but dogs especially. What do you think that is?
Julie:
I think part of it is just the demographic shift towards not having children, or having them much later, and that leaves, you know, possibly a void or just kind of this, still this natural urge to have another being that you’re bonding with and that you’re taking care of and that’s there for you, you know the end of each day and you’re there for them. I think that’s part of it. And then people are also, you know, younger people are starting to move out to live on their own later in life. So, you know, I think it’s probably easier to bring a pet into that environment than starting a family when you’re, you know, possibly still living at home. And I think also, a lot of it is just that there is so much more support now for pet parents, like a lot more brands, you know, have shown up to serve that niche and to kind of meet those gaps. So, whether it’s like, you know, better, much better toys than ever existed before or, you know, even like clothes for pets or houses for pets, there are hotels for dogs like that are strictly for dogs, the same way that we would have a hotel. They have their own room, they have a TV, they have a couch.
Kevin King:
Zoe had that. When I would travel, I was paying $77 a night for a room that’s probably the size of my little studio here, I don’t know, 8 by 10. It’s not a cage, it’s like 8 by 10.
Julie:
That’s amazing.
Kevin King:
She had a bed in there. I would take her to bed and a few of her toys. She had a TV. She had, like you know that they just play, I don’t know dog TV or something, just dog noises or dog streams scrolling. I had a camera where I could look in on her. So, yeah, it’s like I call it the dog hotel. You know it’s just going to the doggy hotel. It has a pool where the dogs can go, A waiting pool for the dogs and play areas and the whole nine yards. The industry of pets is huge, as you know, on Amazon, especially when it comes to dogs, Because of that, there’s so many people that are similar to you. They’re like oh, I have a great idea, my dog, I wish there was this product. Let me go make it or let me go sell it on Amazon. It’s super competitive and I know it’s one of the top, for PPC one of the most expensive PPC categories, especially on the supplement side for dogs. How do you stand out? I mean, when you first made your product, you saw a need and you made the solution for it with the cream. But then going beyond that, even though your cream might be better and you did a lot of work, experimenting and working in the kitchen and trying different things and doing your research, even with all that work and you have a better product, that doesn’t mean you’re going to actually sell it. Even though the man might be there, there might be somebody else that’s out marketing you or out positioning you or get more reviews. So how do you approach? What’s your approach when it comes to pets? To actually say, look, my product is better and I’ve seen your products, they are better than a lot of what’s out there. How do you position that so that you can actually get a foothold in and just not be crushed and actually make some money?
Julie:
I think you know, if I were to do it today. So, going back to the supplement that I launched in 2022, it was a very expensive market to play in. You know, since that time, I’ve heard from founders who say they never spent less than $200,000 or $300,000 on each supplement that they launched. You know, I did not have that sort of capital at all by any means. So, to your point, you’re spending five, six dollars a click going up against players who have years of subscription revenue to basically fund that sort of ad spend because they’ve got that recurring revenue to spend on customer acquisition as a new brand. You don’t have that and so, going into it, if I were to launch a supplement today which I wouldn’t, but it’s just a really crowded space. I’m not sure what’s left for me to add in that space, but if I were to do that, I would start by making sure that there is something that’s a differentiator for which the demand actually exists.
Julie:
So pup wax was really different, but at the end of the day, it was also a niche that was much smaller. Not every dog, thankfully, has skin issues, but every dog eats, every dog has snacks, and then, on the flip side, that makes it a very crowded space, so you would need to focus on what are the differentiators? Where can I do something that’s different that everybody else is doing but then also, would anyone find it? Is it solving a problem where people are searching for the solutions? Because, say, it’s a hair growth supplement for dogs. Maybe nobody’s doing that, but if 1% of dogs and I’m just making these numbers up. If 1% of dogs have hair loss issues, you’re just not going to have the demand to have a successful launch necessarily, and so I think a lot in being successful on Amazon comes down to the data and understanding the demand for what you’re launching. One of the things I learned in Japan is that you’re not launching products, you’re launching groups of keywords, and that is something that just really stuck with me, and that’s really what it comes down to when you’re doing the math to understand is this a path that can be profitable?
Kevin King:
So how is marketing to pet parents different than marketing to just the parent? So, like, how would I market differently a dog product to you. If you’re going, if you’re going on Amazon and you’re looking for a product for Julie and you’re like this is for me or this is I need something for me, versus I’m buying something for my pet, what’s the difference in the psychology or the little twist that you’ve got to make when you’re actually doing the marketing and writing the copy, beyond the keywords and beyond, you know, making sure you got all that stuff for discoverability, but the emotional side of it, the psychological side, what do you feel is different or that you have to do? And you probably got a lot of valuable information about these thousand people that you talked to. What do you see there? What can you advise there?
Julie:
I think that the barrier is actually higher in pets than marketing similar products for humans. I think as pet parents, we are less likely to take risks with our pets than with ourselves. So like we will try a supplement perhaps
Kevin King:
Good point.
Julie:
And maybe not like the taste or throw it out, or you know it doesn’t work. But if it’s for our dog, we need to know, we need to trust who’s making it, we need to trust who is behind it, we need to understand, like everything about it and we need to be sure it’s not going to give them an upset stomach. Dogs in particular are very sensitive, you know, as far as like what they ingest and some just really, even if it’s a great product, they don’t tolerate change well and it can take a couple of weeks to kind of transition slowly to a new product. And so I think pet parents are actually much less trusting and much less inclined to try something new. Even if you’re giving out free samples, if it’s a farmer’s market, I’ll try it. If it’s free for myself, but will I give it to my dog? Probably not, because is it worth, you know, possibly having a stomachache later for something that you know I don’t know the person that made it, and so I think you know, and same with toys.
Julie:
I think there’s a higher expectation of quality and you know we want to make sure it’s not going to fall apart or break or you know they can choke on it or something, just things that we are less concerned when we’re shopping for ourselves and I mean us, I don’t mean our children, obviously. But yeah, I think that it’s actually harder to market to pet parents and that was something that you know. That I think I learned over the last couple of years that I didn’t initially anticipate it’s actually quite difficult. You really have to work to gain their trust and earn their trust. It’s not, it’s not something you can just, you know, take for granted or get because you’ve sent them 10 emails, that’s not going to cut it.
Kevin King:
So how do you do that? Is that with reviews of other people they trust? Is it word of mouth? How do you get someone to try something and trust you when they don’t know you? And especially like I agree with what you just said. I think you made a very good point that we’re willing to try things on ourselves, that we’re not willing to try on our dog or on our pet, because the pet, I think part of it’s like we know that, oh, if this gives me an upset stomach, I’ll just deal with it, I’ll be okay. But well, what if it actually gives my dog and poor dog? I don’t their feelings and they can’t do anything about it. And I got to, you it’s a whole I agree a thousand percent with what you said, but how do you overcome that? What were some tactics or techniques that you found that have worked for you with your brand to help you nudge in that door of trust and just give it a try?
Julie:
Yeah, I think what works best is when that recommendation comes from someone that is already trusted. So whether it is an influencer that someone follows so often I hear like I’ll try it because they said so, but they would never just try it because a brand said so or whether that is a trusted retailer that is offering a product and, for example, Whole Foods has a very, very stringent vetting process as far as what ingredients are allowed to be sold in its products. So someone may try something because Whole Foods is carrying it, but outside of that you know they wouldn’t try it unless they’ve heard from like 10 other people that it’s working. So I think influencer marketing works well, but for me I found it was very hard to scale because those relationships that were effective were the ones where I nurtured them over years of truly building authentic relationships, where they started to love the brand so much that they would post about it for free just because they’re using it that day and they love it and they have a couple hundred thousand followers. But it’s not about the money at that point anymore. It’s just because they’re excited about the brand and I think their followers know that and they can sense that. They perceive that when they see someone just posting about a product because they love it, versus like a sponsored post that was paid for for that week or that month.
Kevin King:
It’s more authentic. How did you finance all this? I mean, did you? You said earlier, you put something on a credit card, but you had a corporate job I guess I’m assuming you’re making a decent salary. Then you 2019, you jump in and like launch the uh, the cream, and then you’ve expanded additional things. You, you dabbled in supplements and realize, hey, this is a taking a lot of money. Um, how did you finance this whole thing? What did you have to go into debt? Or did you have some savings, or you have an investor?
Julie:
Um, no, completely bootstrapped, so I don’t have any investors. Um, so it’s a mix of savings and grants. Um, you know, I’ve applied to pretty much every opportunity that’s come along.
Kevin King:
What kind of grants? That’s interesting. I don’t hear that very often, grants.
Julie:
Oh yeah, UBS Project Entrepreneur, that was a $25,000 grant that I received. New Voices sponsored one, together with Target. That was $15,000. Dell, I won $5,000. They all add up to a lot.
Kevin King:
How do you find those? Were you just Googling grants for entrepreneurs or grants for female entrepreneurs, or dog pet? How did you find that stuff?
Julie:
So different ways. So some just through programs once I’ve taken part. Then they have mailing lists and they’ll share opportunities. Others so I sign up for Google alerts and I had Google alerts set up for every combination that you could think of, like CPG, founder grant, women accelerator grant, women incubator, pet care. You know, pet care grant, leap ventures is, you know, a big one in the pet space. The one that probably was the most life-changing for me was the Tory Burch Foundation Fellowship. That was a one-year program. Yeah, so just kind of every which way. There’s not really one list for all the grants. Hello, Alice has a lot of grant resources that they share monthly as well.
Kevin King:
That’s really cool. That’s an interesting tack that I don’t hear. Too many people talk about going the grant method to actually launch a product. So the Tory Burch you said that’s a year and it was influential. What do you mean by that? Was there some? Every month you got some money, or was it some training or some connections that came out of that? How was it really beneficial?
Julie:
No. So that’s a really amazing program because of the way that it’s structured so a lot of these kind of corporate associated accelerators, the corporation will provide some grant money and then that’s it. Tori Burch herself is extremely passionate about supporting female entrepreneurs, so she has an entire like operations team behind the fellowship program. So it’s a year of educational programming, a year of like one-on-one. Well, the advisory support actually continues. So you have advisors anywhere from like buyers from Whole Foods or from Nordstrom or from, you know, like all paths of life, from supply chain, logistics, marketing who you’re able to tap into as part of your network, who are just also passionate about helping entrepreneurs succeed. And there is a $5,000 educational grant attached as well, which is also fantastic. But the bigger piece of that fellowship is really the accessibility to advisors, having them as part of your network, that you wouldn’t otherwise have. And a lot of these grant programs that I have been lucky enough to benefit from, a lot of them are attached to different accelerators and so, through the accelerator programs, typically they’re, you know, anywhere from like four weeks to six weeks. Tory Burch’s was a year long. There’s just so much that comes out of that in the way of networking and understanding you know, the different opportunities for the business, helping you to identify some of the blind spots and then also just making connections that can kind of help you get to that next step.
Kevin King:
You said you were in the Target one and I’m assuming you got into a little bit of retail with Target when you were in that little deal, or no?
Julie:
No. So the program culminated with a line review. So basically that’s your opportunity to actually pitch the buyer, the same as any other brand who may be interested in getting placed in Target. You have the same amount of time, but the difference is that the program the five-week program before that helped to prepare you for the line review and understand exactly how to pitch, and we mutually agreed. It’s too early for the brand at the time and I just had that single SKU, so it did not make sense, and so that’s something that I haven’t felt ready to pursue yet. It’s a lot easier to get into mass retail than to stay into mass retail, and if you launch in Target or you know any mass retailer and you, you know, and it flops, you’re done. Like you don’t really get another shot, and so you want to be sure that you have the supply chain and the capabilities to succeed, not just on the supply chain side but on the marketing side, the ad spend that’s required for a successful launch, and that that really makes sense for your business before you go all in.
Kevin King:
So now are you just Amazon and Shopify, or are you doing anything else besides at Walmart or anything else?
Julie:
So I launched in Nordstrom November 1st actually, so just two weeks ago.
Kevin King:
Oh awesome! Congratulations!
Julie:
Thank you!
Kevin King:
Was that a regional test or a nationwide test?
Julie:
So it’s national, online, digital right now.
Kevin King:
Okay.
Julie:
Yeah, it’s been really really great. Amazing opportunity and yeah, it’s been going well. It’s actually been very interesting to see.
Kevin King:
Did they approach you?
Julie:
So that’s actually something that came out of the Tory Burch program again. So I was connected to some people at Nordstrom who connected me to some other people, and it just evolved from there. But I’ve been talking to them for a couple of years and the timing was right this time. So, yeah, but it’s been very interesting as a seller to see the differences in just the ease of being live in a different marketplace compared to Amazon. So Amazon can be very siloed in the way that some things are approached when it comes to compliance issues and so forth, and so it’s been definitely a breath of fresh air to just experience it differently.
Kevin King:
How many SKUs total do you have right now?
Julie:
Probably about 30. So I’m in the process of whittling it down, and that is something that came out of the think tank in Austin was really to focus on what’s working and cut everything that’s not. So I’ve been laser focused on getting rid of SKUs, selling them out and just really really doubling down on what’s been working.
Kevin King:
Let’s talk about this, the Think Tank that you came to. I mean, you came out. You’re a little hesitant to come. I think Tim told you hey, just just trust the process, you should come. And I remember we got you, we have you on camera, I have the. I have you on camera going. This was, uh, amazing, this was life-changing. This was different. I remember I didn’t, I didn’t moderate yours. I think Mark did, um, but I I came in and heard parts of it. I remember a couple people. I think Steve Simonson was like even you know, he’s like kind of pushing back on a couple of your thoughts pretty strongly at one point there and like saying like look you’re, you’re thinking this totally wrong. You need to, you need to hit yourself on the head and think of this in a different way, almost. And then you came around. You’re like, oh yeah, you’re actually. I think you’re actually right on some of this. I don’t agree with you on everything, but I think you’re right. But what did you get out of that? There’s another Think Tank that’s happening in February, so that was the first one I’d done and then basically I got a 10 out of 10. I mean there’s a small little tweaks here and there that we can make, but people were some people were saying this is even better than a BDSS event, and so I’m doing it again in February and it’s a whole different. There are a few of the same experts, but over half of them are totally different that are going to be coming out, and some of it’s will depend on who’s actually in the hot seat.
Kevin King:
It was difficult to get people to come out because they’re like what is this? I don’t understand. This is a lot of money. So I had to discount it to get people to even pay. And then, once people are there, most of them were like I would have paid five or 10 times this if I knew what I was getting. What was it? What did you get out of the Think Tank that if someone listening to this maybe is like, well, maybe I need some help with my business or I’m kind of stuck, or we had people doing, you know, $130 million there. We have people doing 75 million, so it’s not just and then we have people that are, you know, doing a little bit less than a million. It’s the whole range. What did you get from that? What was the value of that for?
Julie:
you, so you got to have a really thick skin to be there. But that’s the idea, right? You’re going to be told and to be shown where your blind spots are. What are you missing? What are you not seeing in your business? Where are you just completely fucking up and on the wrong path? And what would somebody like you know? I went in with certain questions where I thought, okay, these are the things I need answers to, and my Think Tank opened my eyes to problems that I didn’t even know I had and opportunities that I didn’t even know that I should be solving for. So, for example, one was the unit economics. I thought they were pretty decent for my hero products and I learned from that just different areas where there’s still a lot of opportunity to do better, and that is something that I mean. When you’re scaling a business, that’s what it all comes down to is the unit economics, right? So if, you know whether it’s 10 cents or a buck, that’s a massive difference over time. And so I think you know for a lot of us, you know just talking to other people who participated in the Think Tank you’re going with like this, not even an expectation. you’re not really sure how it’s going to go, but you figure you’re definitely going to get some good value out of it.
Julie:
And then just mind blowing not even just my own Think Tank just being able to sit in on and observe some of the other think tanks, some of the hot seats, which was like hanging out in the living room, just kind of brainstorming around someone else’s problem. All of those probably any one of those experiences like if you took any two hour period out of the four or five days that we were there just was completely transformative for the business, the takeaways from that. So one of the first steps that I took after leaving was finalizing with Zignify. I’d been talking to them for quite some time about a sourcing project and you know that just kind of clinched it for me, like, okay, I think there’s a huge opportunity here and so moving forward with them. They provide sourcing services all over the world. I’ve heard you speak about them, you know, met Julie, obviously in Japan, and just you know, I think coming through the think tank experience and hearing from others, okay, these are some opportunities that I see for you um changed everything
Kevin King:
What is a Think Tank like, oh, this is a mastermind, there’s some presentations and uh, oh, you’re sitting in a chair up in front of an audience and you know some people are answering, answering your questions. Can you explain what, how the process works? Maybe walk me through, like, okay, when you, when you came, this is what I expected when I sat down, this is what happened, this is the process, and afterwards this is how I felt. Can you kind of walk me through that whole? Explain it in detail?
Julie:
Sure, sure. So it starts before we even arrive right. Like with a very long questionnaire about every aspect of the business and really forces you to think about the issues that you have, the things that you’d like answers to. Those are shared confidentially with the experts that are then curated specifically for your think tank to help work on some of the problems that you’ve identified. So you come for your think tank, you have the choice to either have it open for the other participants to sit in on or not. Mine was closed and then you’ve got, I think, 10 to 12 experts sitting around a table the first hour they are just asking you questions to really, really understand your business. So they’ve read beforehand what you’ve shared about the business, but they take that hour to ask questions about everything under the sun, from your decisions to your process, to your costs, to just all of it. And then the next hour, I believe was just sharing recommendations. So going around the room based on each of their different areas of expertise and remember they’ve been curated specifically for your business to add value. And so then going around the room and kind of getting all of their ideas, their insights, and the final takeaway is like an actual plan of. You know these are the action items to get from where you are today to where you want to be. You know, whether it’s six months out, a year out, this is how you get there. This is the roadmap. So you are leaving with a very actionable roadmap that is coming from, you know, the inputs of some of the best people in the space people, space people doing, I think, eight, nine figures, even.
Kevin King:
You came in expecting to get one thing, but you got something different. Can you talk about that?
Julie:
Sure, I think for me, what was so different was the takeaways, like learning okay, here are some fundamental things that are not working well in my business, where I didn’t even really think that those were the priorities, and even all the way down to the listing level, I thought my listings were pretty decent, and not just in the think tank. What’s really cool about the experience is because you’re there in this mansion with these people for days. They will just grab you. A couple of people pulled me aside and they’re like, hey, let’s sit down. And they showed me this is why your listings are like I wouldn’t buy this and here’s why. And that candid, like conversation, you’re not going to get that anywhere else. Like no one’s people will say, oh, your stuff looks great, it looks cool, or you know, maybe change this, but these are people who are not afraid to be blunt and you know that’s, that’s what we came for right. Like that really really honest feedback on like here’s how I can improve, and definitely came away with that.
Kevin King:
So was it a little scary to go through this process? So someone listening to this like this sounds interesting. Maybe I want to try it, but I don’t want to like show all my warts and have someone tear me a new asshole, you know, over my business. This might be embarrassing or this might be, you know, it might make me cry. What would you say to those people?
Julie:
Amazon’s going to tear you a new one, right? So isn’t it better to let someone else do it? That will actually get you to where you want to be? I don’t know. You have to have a thick skin and everything, and especially as an Amazon seller. If you’re not willing to hear the feedback on how to improve your business whether it’s Amazon or any kind of business I don’t know if your business is going to last.
Kevin King:
So where are you going from here? What’s the plan? Is it to continue to like you said? You’re going to go from 30 SKUs and probably cut some of those back and concentrate in some of the more of your hero SKUs, and then is it to get into retail? Is it to keep growing it and hopefully sell it in three or four years? Or what’s the Julie plan?
Julie:
Yeah, so right now. I don’t know if you saw, but one of my products was named Oprah’s Favorite Things. It was announced the same day as the Nordstrom launch, so that has–
Kevin King:
Oh, awesome. Congratulations, again on that.
Julie:
Thank you, thank you. That has skyrocketed the business and sales and just already taking everything to-.
Kevin King:
How did you get that one? Did you submit? Was that another one where you submitted something? Or they find you.
Julie:
No, the team found me at a trade show actually, and so you know lots of samples were sent and shared and I honestly don’t know how I got so lucky. It’s been a huge, huge blessing. It’s only been since November 1st, so you know there’s the bump in sales, but just the rise in visibility and, I think, that credibility that it gives the business as well. Oprah is obviously looking at hundreds or thousands of products over the years, and this is a product, but also a brand, that she’s gotten really excited about, and so that was definitely going to shape what I’m focusing on for the next year to come. I was already primarily going in that direction with the business, and then the Nordstrom launch as well. Coinciding with the announcement has been really great timing. So I am planning for the next year to focus not just on where I’m growing, but also where I can cut costs, where I can do better in the supply chain. The things that I’ve learned in the think tank around that are definitely areas that I’ll be focusing on.
Kevin King:
So what’s the hardest thing about running your own e-commerce business?
Julie:
What makes it hardest to scale is understanding, or getting better at finding ways to outsource different pieces so that you’re not wearing all of the hats all of the time. I think that that is something that I probably tend to do for too long, Like I’m just too much in the weeds, and another one of the recommendations from the think tank was you know a few different books that focus on you know understanding how to pull yourself out of the business so that you’re not actually working in it all of the time, and I think that that is something that makes it a lot harder to scale. Back to your question about five years out you know I would love to exit, and in order to be positioned to exit, you know you need the teams in place and also the process for every step, everything that you’re doing in the business, and I think a lot of times people are not thinking about that early enough as they’re building the business, so that is something that I’m definitely more focused on now as well.
Kevin King:
So what’s the funnest part when you’re doing this part of the business? You’re like the time just flies. You’re like, oh my God, it’s been four hours. That feels like 10 minutes.
Julie:
I think the product development, the ideation, coming up with the new ideas and also just constantly coming up with ways to make it even better, even more fun, even cooler, I think you know as a brand owner. I love that part.
Kevin King:
So how important is it to get out? There’s a lot of sellers that they only watch virtual stuff and they never actually get into person, go to person. You’ve been to a few events. How has that changed? Or has it changed your business? Because you can go to these events and there’s a lot of information. Some of it applies to you, some of it doesn’t. You’ve got to implement on it to actually get the value. But beyond that, what is it about as an e-commerce seller? Like getting out of your own little house or your own little comfort zone. That is beneficial.
Julie:
Most of the conversation doesn’t happen in that recorded hour on screen or in the session. You know it can happen when you’re sitting in the session and you’re talking to the people next to you or you’re sitting around the lunch table or you’re having dinner later. You will miss out on, I think, like 80% of what is happening or you know kind of the value that you can take away if you’re not attending in person. There is not a single event that I have attended where I felt afterward like that was not a good use of my time and even you know, not every event has the best content. But then it can be somebody that I met. You know it only takes one conversation for a lasting connection. You know, and then you just never know when and where that will happen, and it definitely won’t happen when you’re sitting at home, like it just doesn’t.
Kevin King:
And you mentioned that’s Amazon or e-commerce types of events. What about? You mentioned trade shows. You got the Oprah thing off a trade show. How important do you think it is to get out there and were you exhibiting at this trade show? Were you just walking around the trade show? Can you talk about a lot of brands don’t do that, and can you talk about the value and the importance of maybe doing that as well?
Julie:
I mean, I think that depends on strategic priorities for a brand. If you’re planning to sell only on Amazon, I don’t know what the value is. If it’s really there, and investing in a trade show, they’re not necessarily cheap. The one that I’ve done the last couple of years is New York Now, which I think is more accessible in terms of pricing. It’s like $4,000 or $5,000 at the lowest level. Some trade shows start at $10,000, $15,000. Um, but I think—
Kevin King:
Is that a pet show or a gift show, or what was it. What type of show is it?
Julie:
Yeah, it’s um, it’s, it was it used to be called the gift show actually. So so the history was gift um and it’s split into gift home and um I forgot their other category, but yeah, it’s, it’s origins. Where’s a gift show? and it’s still primarily that, um, but I think you know—
Kevin King:
At the Javits center?
Julie:
Yeah, it’s at the Javits center yeah, um, and shop object is another one that happens at exactly the same time each year, so each February and August kind of coincides with New York Now, um, and, and there are tons all over the country, right like there’s, there’s a Dallas market that’s huge in Texas, there’s Atlanta market, there’s the Vegas market, Seattle.
Kevin King:
Yeah, the pet shows too. You have Pet.
Julie:
Global Pet and Superzoo are the two big ones.
Kevin King:
Superzoo in Vegas and then Global Pet in Orlando. I think it is yeah.
Julie:
Exactly, yeah. So I mean I think that is more of a question for a brand if they want to get into wholesale or not. For me, I still didn’t have the same clarity that I have today around the direction of the business. So I was kind of just trying everything right, like going to all the Amazon events, trying the trade shows, just trying to figure out what will make sense. To be perfectly candid, I didn’t have this ironclad strategy where I knew, okay, this is exactly what I need to be doing. I was just trying a bunch of things.
Kevin King:
Well, Julie, this has been fun. I really appreciate you coming on here and sharing. If someone wanted to reach out to you if Oprah’s little sister is listening and says I want her brand in my stores as well how would they find you? What’s the best way to reach out to you?
Julie:
Yep. So on all social, it’s at puppington.co and same as the website. It’s dot co, not dot com, Although I now actually have the dot com, it took me a couple of years to acquire that one and, yeah, by email. It’s [email protected]. Always love to connect with other sellers, other founders or anyone just looking to learn about, you know, selling.
Kevin King:
Thanks, Julie. I’m sure I’ll see you again. It’s somewhere in 2025. You never know where I’m actually getting a puppy, so I’m not going anywhere for for a couple months. So I can train it.
Julie:
Did you pick one already?
Kevin King:
I have not, but I’m, by the time this comes out, I may have one, or I’m debating. Do I get it now or do I wait till after BDSS in April? So I’m I’m debating, so I’m either going to have it now or I’ll wait until, uh, mid April, Uh, when I come back from BDSS, cause I’ve got a few events and that way I can. Uh, I, like I said earlier, I want to focus for a couple of months and not be traveling uh and bond on it. That’s going to be my new little buddy, but dogs are good people. Their only flaw is they don’t stay with us long enough. But it’s a cool niche to be in, and congratulations on all your success.
Julie:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Kevin King:
When you do a business that’s also your passion, like Julie’s case, where she loves pets and loves dogs specifically it makes it a lot easier to do it for the long term and to wait for that final payday as you’re building it. Maybe not take a lot of money out as you go along, but you’re building towards something and you’re having some fun and you’re helping others and helping other people along the way, and that’s exactly what Julie’s been doing. We’ll be back again next week with another episode of the AM/PM Podcast. If you want to come to MarketMasters, you can go to BillionDollarSellers.com and get the latest information on the next MarketMasters think tank event that Julie talked about. It’s February 20th to the 24th in Austin, Texas, at the Gatsby Mansion, but all the details are at BillionDollarSellersSummit.com. Before we leave today, I’ve got some words of wisdom for you. It’s up to you to make the magic happen. I encourage you to live life to the fullest and without fear. See you again next week.
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