Defining your target audience is key when building your brand as it’s so important to know who you’re selling your products or services to.
In this episode, I hear from Aaron Chatterley, co-founder of teen beauty brand indu and beauty retailer Feelunique. Having co-founded Feelunique in 2005, Aaron and his team grew the business which was acquired by Sephora for £132 million in 2021. Since then, Aaron has co-founded indu to create beauty and skincare products tailored specifically to teenage skin.
Aaron shares his advice on how to identify your target audience and how to build strong customer relationships with them.
Aaron's advice:
FF&M enables you to own your own PR. Recorded, edited & published by Juliet Fallowfield, 2023 MD & Founder of PR & Communications consultancy for startups Fallow, Field & Mason. Email us at hello@fallowfieldmason.com or DM us on instagram @fallowfieldmason.
Let us know how your start up journey is going or if you have any questions you would like us to discuss in future episodes.
FF&M recommends:
MUSIC CREDIT Funk Game Loop by Kevin MacLeod. Link & Licence
Defining your target audience is key when building your brand as it’s so important to know who you’re selling your products or services to.
In this episode, I hear from Aaron Chatterley, co-founder of teen beauty brand indu and beauty retailer Feelunique. Having co-founded Feelunique in 2005, Aaron and his team grew the business which was acquired by Sephora for £132 million in 2021. Since then, Aaron has co-founded indu to create beauty and skincare products tailored specifically to teenage skin.
Aaron shares his advice on how to identify your target audience and how to build strong customer relationships with them.
Aaron's advice:
FF&M enables you to own your own PR. Recorded, edited & published by Juliet Fallowfield, 2023 MD & Founder of PR & Communications consultancy for startups Fallow, Field & Mason. Email us at hello@fallowfieldmason.com or DM us on instagram @fallowfieldmason.
Let us know how your start up journey is going or if you have any questions you would like us to discuss in future episodes.
FF&M recommends:
MUSIC CREDIT Funk Game Loop by Kevin MacLeod. Link & Licence
How to attract your target audience to your brand with Aaron Chatterley, Co-Founder Feelunique & Indu
[00:00:00] Welcome to season 10 of How To Start Up, the podcast helping you start and scale your business with advice from entrepreneurs on what to do now, next, or never when scaling your company. This season, we're focusing on all things brand. So you'll hear from a series of amazing entrepreneurs on what they've learned in their own journeys.
[00:00:17] hosted by me, Juliet Fallowfield, founder of the B Corp certified PR and communications consultancy, Fallow, Field and Mason. Our mission is to enable you to earn your communications in-House with a long-term view.
[00:00:30] Defining your target audience is key when building your brand and it's so important to know who you're selling your products or services to. In this episode I hear from Aaron Chatterley, co founder of teen beauty brand Indoo and beauty retailer Fiddle Unique. Having co founded Feel Unique in 2005, Aaron and his team grew the business, which was acquired by Sephora for 132 million in 2021.
[00:00:55] Since then, Aaron has co founded Indoo to create beauty and skincare products [00:01:00] tailored specifically for teen skin. Aaron shares his advice on how to identify your target audience, and why it is so crucial to do at the beginning of your business.
[00:01:09] Juliet: hi, Aaron, thank you so much for your time on How to Start Up Today.
[00:01:12] Juliet: It's wonderful to have you on. Before we get into everything about Target Audience, we would love it if you could introduce yourself and a bit about the businesses, businesses that you have started. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:28] Juliet: I am Aaron Chatterley
[00:01:28] Aaron Chatterley: guess as much as I hate the term beauty entrepreneur, I was referred to as this morning. So I started my Kind of,, entrepreneur, if you like career, , in 1996, when I started a web development business in Oxford, uh, built that business up for three and a bit years, and then sold it to a software company in June, 2000.
[00:01:54] Aaron Chatterley: Um, so my background was very much in creating e commerce websites for other [00:02:00] businesses, and we worked with, you know, companies like Antica flooring and sky television, Jaguar, Land Rover. And then in June of two thousand 2005, um, I launched a business called Feel Unique, which is a, was an online beauty retailer. Um, I launched out with a co founder, we launched feelunique neat because I was considering launching another web development company in Jersey at the time I'd moved back to Jersey and you can only scale an agency so, so big. Um, and while we could have created a great business and paid the school fees and, you know, um, at the time we were looking at some other companies that were starting to tap into some verticals in e commerce and some good friends of ours had a business called play.
[00:02:48] Aaron Chatterley: com, which was Absolutely flying in early 2000s. They kind of owned the category for DVDs and CDs and video games. And obviously Amazon at the time were [00:03:00] mostly known for books and kind of owned books. And Asos were coming through on high street fashion and Net a Porter of selling to sort of Take control of, um, high end fashion.
[00:03:12] Aaron Chatterley: And we kind of thought, well, look, rather than starting another agency that we can only scale so far, there must be some other verticals that are either poorly served or untapped. So we looked at a few different things and ended up settling on beauty. Um, the great thing about beauty at the time was, The brands, the kind of luxury and the heritage brands hadn't really got on board yet, but it was clear that at some point they were going to, the businesses that were out there selling beauty online kind of in 2005. Weren't great. Um, or they were very focused on niches of beauty. So very focused on hair or very focused on premium beauty or very focused on mass. Yeah. And we believe that the [00:04:00] way that people bought beauty was, was cross category. And we figured that there was a great opportunity to create something which was focused on range, ie everything from Chanel to Rimmel, um, because that's how most, beauty shoppers shop, you know, very few people are really, really brand loyal in the way that they, they probably were, you know, like a few decades back.
[00:04:24] Aaron Chatterley: Um, so we launched a unique in 2005, built it up. We self funded it. We never raised any money. We put 70, 000, I think myself and rich cheese and the co founder put 70, 000 pounds in each. We knew that we had to be Kind of breaking even within about 18 months to make it work. And we were pretty,, I'm going to say lucky because it was quite a lot of luck involved in it, but we, we managed to break even I think about month 17 and then never raised money.
[00:04:49] Aaron Chatterley: We ended up selling half of it to private equity in 2012. And then we finally exited the whole thing to LVMH Sephora in the late half [00:05:00] of 2021. Uh, I stayed on for a year. At that point, and during the beginning of that year, came up with this other crazy idea to start a brand.
[00:05:12] Aaron Chatterley: One of the things, Of selling feel unique to Sephora and we had several other buyers in the process at the time. Um, and Sephora was, you know, obviously the perfect home for the business, but the flip side of that was that it was always going to be rebranded as Sephora. So Sephora bought feel unique because they wanted a foothold in the UK, UK being a highly strategic beauty market where Sephora didn't.
[00:05:36] Aaron Chatterley: Really well had unsuccessfully tried,, eight or nine years ago to come into the market. Um, but we always knew that they were going to rebrand it and support. So the legacy kind of ended at that point, which was a little bit sad, but. You know, it's still an unbelievable outcome and I'm not complaining, but the beauty of starting a brand is that if it works, if it works, [00:06:00] um, hopefully whoever buys it, if it ever gets sold, won't change the name and we will have something which actually lasts.
[00:06:07] Juliet: that's so interesting because there's so much in that in terms of what does success look like. And there's a really interesting question coming your way from our previous guest at the end of this episode, but I'll save that, but the success metric of wanting the legacy to last and the naming of that, because when we're talking about brand, a lot of people get caught up on the name and the logo, the visual identity, and they forget about everything else sometimes.
[00:06:32] Juliet: Um, so with Indu, when did you found Indu? Okay.
[00:06:35] Aaron Chatterley: So I think it was about May of 2021, the deal was done to sell. Feelunique neat to Sephora. And I was in a bit of a limbo in that We hadn't yet completed the transaction. So it was kind of four or five month period in between where a whole load of legal stuff was happening.
[00:06:53] Aaron Chatterley: Cause it was a big transaction, 132 million, valuation. So there's a, I mean, there's a lot of stuff has to [00:07:00] happen between agreeing the deal and it actually closing, even though it was done. So I was kind of in a bit of limbo. I provisionally agreed to stay on for a year and I was chatting to my children in August of 2021 about fashion. So I've got twin daughters. And at that point in time, they were 12 years old. Uh, and so I was kind of still employed by Sephora, staying on for a year and as a retailer, um, everybody, certainly in beauty, you want to attract teenagers, you want to get them onto your loyalty scheme, you want them as brand fans, you know, we're always thinking about how we can attract that younger audience because obviously the earlier we can build a loyalty and build a relationship with them, the better.
[00:07:43] Aaron Chatterley: And as a dad, I'm kind of interested about how the fashion brands do that so well. And even me as a relatively uncool dad, if you said to me, you've got a 12, year old wants to buy some clothes, I can reel off five or six [00:08:00] teenage fashion brands that, tick a bunch of boxes for the kids themselves and that they're cool, you know, they are well thought of, they love the designs, they're team brands, they've got that, they've got that community behind them and that's how they're kind of learning about, because they don't play in the same spaces that we play in from a media perspective.
[00:08:21] Aaron Chatterley: And, you know, They are teen brands specifically for that audience. But as a parent, I'm also cool with it. They're not being exploited. The price is okay. You know, the materials that are being used aren't harmful, the ticks boxes on both sides without, without the parental validation.
[00:08:39] Aaron Chatterley: destabilizing the coolness of the brand. Because once that happens, the brand's dead. As soon as I go to my kids and say, I've got a cool brand that you should wear to get it, it's over. Um, so the there are fashion brands that do that so well. So as a retailer, I'm thinking what brands do we need to be thinking about or in order to attract more [00:09:00] teens and actually to be able to provide them with relevant products.
[00:09:04] Aaron Chatterley: So I was, I was having this conversation with my kids and it's like, firstly, how do those fashion brands do it? And as you would expect, it's very much around community. It's around tick tock. It's around what the cool kids are wearing, what the captain of the netball team was wearing, who's talking about what, who's posting what pictures, who's sharing what this kind of huge mesh network of nano and micro influences that they're all very, engaged with not necessarily huge influences because they can be a bit more polarizing, but that's where that community is bubbling away from for these fashion brands that are doing it so well. So I'm kind of having this conversation with my kids. I'm like, so what beauty brands are you guys buying into?
[00:09:42] Aaron Chatterley: In the same way that you're buying into fashion. And the answer was kind of surprising in that it was like, well, there aren't really any, there wasn't an obvious answer. I don't have that. Yeah, go to X brands because that's for teenagers. And that was kind of the genesis of the idea.
[00:09:58] Aaron Chatterley: And, you know, just kind of [00:10:00] playing around with it. My kids and one of them said, well, why don't we start our own brand? And I was like, yeah, what the hell? And it was a bit of a joke. And then we forgot all about it. And then a few hours later, we're back at the hotel. And I thought, you know what, there's something in this.
[00:10:13] Aaron Chatterley: .
[00:10:13] Aaron Chatterley: Two and a half years later, we launched, direct to consumer in October and we just agreed to launch exclusively with Sephora, um, in store and online in July. Yeah.
[00:10:26] Juliet: amazing. That's huge, but I love the fact you had this sort of bit of a loose end, tying up a deal, got a bit of an idea and it was your, and given that this episode's all around audience, you'd surveyed your audience and they'd given you the golden ticket if there's, there's no product there for us, there's a
[00:10:42] Aaron Chatterley: Yeah. I think that's where, that's where the sort of the genesis of the idea comes from. And as an entrepreneur, that's, it's a really important point because I think what happens is I have ideas. All the time. And what usually happens is you have a great idea and every idea is great. But over a [00:11:00] period of time, whether it's hours, days or weeks, they track usually down. Cost of goods is more expensive than we thought. There's more competition than we thought. You know, the ingredients is a problem, whatever it is. And eventually the idea gets where you forgot it ever happened. But sometimes you have an idea and the more you validate it and talk about it in the early stages, it tracks up.
[00:11:21] Aaron Chatterley: It's like, Oh, actually there's less competition than we thought. And, you know, actually the audience is like crying out for this. And suddenly the idea gets to the point where it's like, Oh my God, we just actually, we just have to do it. And that's happened maybe three or four times. Feel Unique was certainly one of those times.
[00:11:37] Aaron Chatterley: And then Indu is one of the others. But the first thing that we did, which I think is relevant to the conversation today, is Once we kind of established that there was a white space in the market,
[00:11:48] Juliet: Silence.
[00:11:49] Aaron Chatterley: the first thing that we did, and obviously I had to speak to Sephora at the time because it was under a non compete and I had to get their permission to do this thing, was the most important thing, [00:12:00] especially when we're dealing with an audience that is outside I'm not a teenager, clearly not in the teenager.
[00:12:07] Aaron Chatterley: And most of the people that I was starting to involve in potentially having some degree of involvement in the business were not teenagers, obviously,, was around. Understanding their perspective. In that this has to be authentic because if it's not authentic, and again, the fashion brands do it really well, they're just going to smell it a mile away and it's just not going to happen.
[00:12:29] Aaron Chatterley: And there's been a few teen brands that are out there, but they often can be kind of contrived from an adult perspective. So the first thing that we did to point about, branding is specifically Before we even, got the agency to put into paper in terms of brand identity, because the first thing beyond, yeah, broadly, we're going to sell this type of product.
[00:12:51] Aaron Chatterley: And for us, it was like a selection of skincare, a selection of colorless products and a selection of colored makeup products. [00:13:00] Is the brand identity comes, you know, right up at the front. But before we even did that, we commissioned a research company called Kids Know Best, who specialise in global research with young people and teenagers.
[00:13:14] Aaron Chatterley: And we worked with a cohort of 2000 teenagers in the US and in the UK, so 1000 in each. location. We had an online platform open for like three months and we were able to directly communicate with that group and do two key things. The first bit was talking to them about their buying habits and what they liked and what they didn't like, and not just within beauty, but Much broader than that.
[00:13:39] Aaron Chatterley: You know, what music they listen to, what fashion brands they bought, what colors they liked, what sports they watch, and then leaning more into beauty. What, what they currently bought, what they wish they could buy, what textures, what smells, what, you know, shades, what, packaging ideas and built this huge kind of research piece.
[00:13:59] Aaron Chatterley: Literally [00:14:00] about what they wanted. And then in the background, we were working with the design agency who came up with four broad concepts for the brand identity. And. I think the really, really key take home in terms of like working with your audience and really listening to your audience was that we as a team, and we have a bunch of advisors who would like some pretty heavyweight people within the beauty industry who have worked in the industry for a long time.
[00:14:27] Aaron Chatterley: We all felt often in some of the conversations and some of the questions that we had around what they would want. We all had a pretty good idea. We would often come into some of the questions that we were asking with a preconceived notion.
[00:14:41] Aaron Chatterley: And sometimes we were right, but we were often wrong. Not wrong to the point of it might have been. Change the potential for success of the business, but wrong enough to go. That could have been impactful, but the clearest example was, and I think when anyone's thinking about [00:15:00] brand identity and, product market fit and understanding your audience was we've done a whole bunch of work.
[00:15:07] Aaron Chatterley: With the research company before we kicked off, we've then appointed the brand identity agency, so they came up with four brand concepts, and obviously the brand name was carved in stone from day one, um, Indu, because it's one of my twin daughter's nicknames, that's where we kind of, Stole it from so we didn't want to move away from that.
[00:15:26] Aaron Chatterley: So the the branding agency came up with four concepts. One was Eastern, zany, Hindu y, Indu y, really edgy, cool. Um, one was kind of gamey, had a tech feel to it. One was the one that we have, although it was a bit punchier. And then the other one was a bit more of an outliner and a bit more kind of traditional beauty.
[00:15:46] Aaron Chatterley: And As a kind of group of adults and the advisors that we had and, you know, the internal team that we had, we were leaning towards two, which was the one that we ended up with and the one that had that kind of Eastern vibe [00:16:00] to it. And. We took it to the group of 2000 kids at the time, confident, like really confident that they were going to go for the zenny eastern one because it was, I'm even looking back now.
[00:16:15] Aaron Chatterley: I still love it. Um, and we were like, you know, well, there's just no, this is going to win by a mile.
[00:16:21] Juliet: Slam dunk. Yeah,
[00:16:22] Aaron Chatterley: And it was a slam dunk for us. Um, but we were wrong. They actually leaned probably 75 percent into the iteration that we ended up with. And it was an eye opener in that it was a real lesson in that you really do have to speak to your audience, like, specifically.
[00:16:39] Juliet: Well, first knowing your audience, who they are, identifying them and then spending some time and everyone is so quick to get off the starting block. They want to launch, they want to get into Selfridges immediately. They're like, Whoa, actually you're, you're better taking it a little bit slower at the beginning to do that groundwork because then you're not going to waste all that effort.
[00:16:57] Juliet: down the line,
[00:16:58] Aaron Chatterley: And we would have[00:17:00]
[00:17:00] Juliet: Well, this, this is what's so interesting. I think I'm constantly looking for efficiencies in time and processes. And everyone's like, but you're in PR, you go for long lunches. I'm like, yeah, no, it's how can I find a more efficient way of doing this without losing creativity?
[00:17:15] Juliet: And if you know who you're speaking to at the beginning, you save wastage later on. For
[00:17:20] Aaron Chatterley: 100%.
[00:17:21] Juliet: can I ask roughly how much that would have cost
[00:17:23] Aaron Chatterley: It wasn't cheap. So I think the important thing to caveat all of that with is the first part of that is identifying your audience was very clear to us from day one.
[00:17:35] Juliet: yeah.
[00:17:36] Aaron Chatterley: And that was part of the attraction.
[00:17:38] Juliet: You know, which markets you wanted to
[00:17:39] Juliet: go to age 13 to 18 year old. That's it. It's done. Dead clear, any teenager globally. Yeah, we wanted to create a global brand.
[00:17:46] Aaron Chatterley: So, and again, that came from that retail perspective, because I'm also, as we're thinking about, is this a business that we should do? Part of that validation process is because I came from a retail background. I probably saw 20, [00:18:00] 30 new brands a month as a retailer at Feel Unique the first question that we're always asking as retailers is how can we merchandise this brand?
[00:18:07] Aaron Chatterley: Where are we going to position this? What's the USPS of this brand? How does this thing stand up? Who is the audience? And that can often be confused, even from the brand themselves. You say, who is your audience? Well, it's kind of like any, any woman, any, any person between 20 and 40.
[00:18:25] Aaron Chatterley: And it's like, I could say we've got yet another Gen Z millennial brand that's you know, avocado based whatever. But as a retailer, what do we do with that? You know, it's vague, but it makes our job harder. So when we're thinking about Indu, I'm sitting there going, if I'm sitting as a retailer, What's the message?
[00:18:48] Aaron Chatterley: And for us, that was part of the attraction of doing it. It's just really clear. It's just, it's just a teenage beauty brand. You know, we don't, we don't have to think beyond that. So it makes the job easier,
[00:18:59] Juliet: Yes, I was going to [00:19:00] say when you then need to lean on other stakeholders to get your product to market and sell it, whether that be press, investors, board members, future employees, making their job easier to understand what product you're offering them and making it so simple that it's like, well, of course, that's a total no brainer
[00:19:17] Aaron Chatterley: especially when it comes to investment.
[00:19:19] Juliet: yes,
[00:19:20] Aaron Chatterley: It's just really clear. You either understand it or you don't. You either believe that teenagers need and want beauty products, or you don't. And we're trying to take away
[00:19:27] Aaron Chatterley: making it work.
[00:19:29] Aaron Chatterley: Are we going to have to make the retailers work to understand what we're doing and how they can merchandise it and make investors work to understand because most people don't want to have to do that. They just want it very clear and simple. Um, so we were lucky with the audience because we knew exactly who they were.
[00:19:45] Aaron Chatterley: That was just, it's just so straightforward.
[00:19:48] Juliet: But you backed it up with research and I think you took the time and attention, to really hone in on your target audience to
[00:19:55] Aaron Chatterley: Yeah. That was for two reasons. One is if we do this, are they going to buy it? Because if they're [00:20:00] not, we're wasting our time. And two is. Now that we know we're going to do it, what exactly do they want? Because again, we might think we know what they want, but often we'll be wrong.
[00:20:11] Aaron Chatterley: Um, and what are they currently buying? How can we produce something which does the job of what they're currently buying, but is, you know, more suitable for them, more age appropriate, less sexualized, all these other boxes that we want to take as parents as well. I think the total cost of that was somewhere in the region of 40 to 60, 000.
[00:20:30] Juliet: Um,
[00:20:30] Juliet: so significance bend,
[00:20:32] Aaron Chatterley: oh, it was significant. Yeah. But again, we went at this in a go big or go home way because we figured it's, a really important demographic. Um, it's clearly a white space. If we don't do it, somebody else is going to do it. Um, We didn't want to launch with just makeup or just skincare because then we got the challenge of if we do well, we'll be known as a teenage skincare brand and it'd be very hard to then bring in color [00:21:00] or vice versa if we went heavily into makeup and then tried to add skincare later.
[00:21:04] Aaron Chatterley: So we wanted to launch with a complete brand, which obviously comes at a very high cost, but to mitigate that expense, spend the money up front.
[00:21:14] Aaron Chatterley: Get the branding right. Do the research.
[00:21:17] Juliet: And what would your advice be for somebody that's starting a brand at a smaller scale that hasn't sold to Sephora? Is there some tips and tricks you'd give somebody about a smaller scale of doing that research to find their target audience?
[00:21:32] Aaron Chatterley: We raised 200, 000 pounds. And that went towards the branding and the research. And, 40 to 60, 000 sounds like a lot, and it is, and it was a big chunk of what we had available at the time, but we just felt it was really important because, of the audience that we were accessing, it would be quite difficult for us as a bunch of adults to directly go to a significant number of teenagers.
[00:21:57] Aaron Chatterley: Because there are a whole bunch of rules about [00:22:00] what you can ask, how you ask it, how you speak to them, how you record it., there is a lot of complexities. If our audience was 18 to 26, or, 20 to 30 or millennials or whatever, that's something that we could have, Done, you know probably mostly ourselves or with a less specialized agency on a smaller scale.
[00:22:19] Aaron Chatterley: Um, but I still think it's really, really important, not just for a product market fit, but do your audience really want this, you know,
[00:22:28] Juliet: for a smaller business that might not have investment, doing it at a smaller scale with a smaller budget, do you say that's still worth the
[00:22:35] Aaron Chatterley: yeah, a hundred percent. We did that with Feelunique. When we launched really near, . Um, and the first thing that we did when we thought this is a good idea was we literally went out to every, at the time, even now, I don't think I'm speaking out of turn. It's mostly women who shop for beauty online, um, as much as I wish it wasn't, but it is.
[00:22:55] Aaron Chatterley: So we spoke to pretty much every woman we knew and friends of friends and [00:23:00] ask them all sorts of questions about what's, what brands they were buying, Well, Products that they were buying how regularly they bought them, where were they buying from?
[00:23:07] Aaron Chatterley: What were the price points? We just people love to help anyway.
[00:23:11] Juliet: Mm.
[00:23:12] Aaron Chatterley: And that's the sort of thing, you know, you can set up. Really easily on like SurveyMonkey and that data is no less valid than us getting an agency to do it for us for three months. It's just
[00:23:23] Aaron Chatterley: we had and also we had this complexity about teenagers.
[00:23:27] Juliet: Yeah. Well, I think information is power and I've never regretted a conversation. We were in our co working office yesterday and there's 17 of us that will , try once a quarter to hang out socially and just chat about stuff, but the information and the skill set that's shared across the, These different businesses, service, brand, product, name it.
[00:23:46] Juliet: Anytime you have a conversation with someone, they will help. And it's just putting your hand up to ask for help. And so you never regret it. But focusing back on more audiences. Often people think our audience is just our client, but we, in our day job, where we teach people [00:24:00] how to do their own PR, we are often looking at the press audience and where they want to reach their client through the media, and we can look at podcasts, newsletters, awards, magazines. It's not just press relations. It's public relations now, but then we started thinking it's not just business to press, it's business to consumer through the press, it's business to investor, business to board member, business to charity, business to employee.
[00:24:21] Juliet: You've got many audiences that you need to talk to. Did you do that work with a sort of future lens, given your experience, you knew what was sort of coming away in a, in a startup of what other audiences we need to define and how we communicate with them. Was that important?
[00:24:41] Aaron Chatterley: Yeah, it's a really good point. And, it's exactly what we did, because we also, the, the three founders, and we're all parents at different stages. I probably, Yeah, so I probably sit more in the middle and that my girls are right in the heart of our, of our target audience and Rina's [00:25:00] got a much younger son and Richard's kids are a little bit older, but when we think back to the primary concerns that we had was one is that the product has to be amazing.
[00:25:09] Aaron Chatterley: Because we can all sell something once that's really easy. That's just marketing and packaging , but selling something that's good enough that people want to come back that comes down to product So we knew the product had to be amazing. So that was a not an easy box to tick but it's a practical path to creating amazing products.
[00:25:30] Aaron Chatterley: The second was that we had to be authentic and going back to my earlier point, authentic for us is like a, it's a double edged sword. Kids have to think it's cool, but a lot of those kids aren't making the buying decision. So we had to have that parental validation. So we knew that if. We created a really, really cool brand, but it didn't tick the boxes of parental acceptance.
[00:25:51] Aaron Chatterley: We were dead in the water again because mostly They're the ones that are going to sign off if not pay for the product
[00:25:58] Juliet: Oh, it's kind of like the [00:26:00] engagement ring problem. In marriages with men proposing to women. It's the woman that's going to have to wear it for the rest of her life, but it's the man that's going to have to pay for it and blindly assume this biggest short of a house purchase of his life.
[00:26:10] Juliet: She's going to like it.
[00:26:12] Aaron Chatterley: And some, yeah, and often choose it.
[00:26:14] Juliet: yeah,
[00:26:15] Aaron Chatterley: I was lucky I got it right.
[00:26:16] Juliet: Oh, congratulations.
[00:26:18] Aaron Chatterley: it. Yeah,
[00:26:19] Juliet: So many
[00:26:20] Aaron Chatterley: absolutely. But we kind of knew that from day one because we were linking it to what other brands had done in that space. Well, and my kids will come to me a little often, but they'll break it.
[00:26:29] Aaron Chatterley: If I'm going to say, I've seen this amazing hoodie on Tik Tok. Everyone's buying everyone's wearing. And so the first thing I'm going to do is Google that brand. And if there's nothing on it, I'm going to be like, are you sure this is real? This is not some scam website. So we knew that we had to do a number of things.
[00:26:47] Aaron Chatterley: Firstly, we had tick the box of the community thing is again, not easy, but fairly straightforward. We, we know how to talk to teenagers and we hire the head of community, we put together a committee, which is [00:27:00] now 250 teenagers. They're involved in every single business decision that we made that impacts the, outward.
[00:27:06] Aaron Chatterley: Facing nature of the brand or the product. So they tested every product. They've had all the samples. They've done all the smells, you know, their tone of voice will run through them, the use of language on the website. So we have this closed user group, um, this platform where these 250 kids, we interact with them on a weekly basis.
[00:27:25] Aaron Chatterley: So we have that authenticity from them, but then the flip side of it is we know that we have to. Tick the parental box. And for that, it was mostly around PR. We recruited a PR agency very, very early on. We didn't want to spend an absolute fortune. So we tapped into relationships that we had existing.
[00:27:47] Aaron Chatterley: Um,
[00:27:48] Juliet: of press relationships.
[00:27:49] Aaron Chatterley: yeah, in terms of press relationship, beauty journalists. And again, I think all too often people not taking away anything from PR because we, have a PR agency, but I think all too [00:28:00] often founders are like, terrified of talking to journalists. I'm like, their job is to find stuff to talk about.
[00:28:06] Aaron Chatterley: They want to talk about, it might not be relevant for them and they might not end up doing anything, but trust me, they're very open to like having conversations. Um,
[00:28:16] Juliet: Oh, thank you. Cause you've just validated my entire startup in the sense that we believe the founder is their own best storyteller. And
[00:28:22] Aaron Chatterley: a hundred
[00:28:22] Juliet: just too scared or worried and they don't think they have the right tools. And so many say to me, it's like, well, the agency has told us that journalists only want to speak to the agency. I'm like, no, they just want to get the angle. They don't care how they get it. As long as they get it at the right time with the right place with the right image. Happy days. So
[00:28:37] Aaron Chatterley: all too often, the agency is kind of almost a blocker because ultimately, of course, the journalist wants to speak to the founder and understand the story and the narrative and, and the why and the, personality. And okay, sometimes the founder might not actually be very screen friendly or very media friendly, but That's Different thing, but Yeah.
[00:28:58] Aaron Chatterley: So I mentor a few people through the [00:29:00] CW and, they're always like terrified of reaching out.
[00:29:04] Aaron Chatterley: I'm like, just get on LinkedIn.
[00:29:06] Juliet: Nothing ventured, nothing gained. , so I will pay my accountant. He'll always be better at accounts than I will. I'm very happy to externalize budget for that, but telling my business story, I should know it better than anybody else and the minute I delegate it to someone else, it's diluted and then diluted again and again and again, and I think that's where we are really good at doing our own PR,
[00:29:26] Juliet: we are so. clear on who we want to talk to and. Very happy accident. The podcast has done that for our business because we are, and it was my mom that made the penny drop in lockdown. I was like, Oh, I'm doing all these amazing phone calls with friends. Give me all this advice, how to start a company. And I've no idea what I'm doing.
[00:29:43] Juliet: I'm fresh out of redundancy. I should record them because I can't take notes quick enough. And she's like, And I said, I should do a podcast. Ah, ha, ha, ha. Like who am I to think to do a podcast? So wouldn't that speak to your future client? And I was like, you are a genius. Thank you very much. And then here we are a hundred episodes in.[00:30:00]
[00:30:00] Juliet: So it's that, courage that you need to just to take the leap, but for us. We do the podcast at a cost to our business on time because we know it speaks to our audience. Future founders will hear this advice and get to know our business. I do do it for the love and I did say to someone the other day, if no one listens, I'd still do it because of my work therapy because I get to interview amazing founders like yourself who give me fantastic advice.
[00:30:22] Juliet: And it sort of, it brings the, the anxiety levels down of like, it's okay. But. We are doing it because we know our future client is a founder or a scale up. So going back to that, of defining your audience will save you time and money in the future at
[00:30:37] Aaron Chatterley: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And it's not that difficult to do.
[00:30:41] Aaron Chatterley: I think the biggest benefit of being, you know, an entrepreneur is the freedom rather than toys and stuff.
[00:30:51] Aaron Chatterley: It's about, you get to choose to do things that you enjoy. And, and for me, that's like, it's just as [00:31:00] like crass as it is. It's like, I don't have to work with people that I don't like. And, I can kind of choose to do the stuff that I enjoy the most and that's kind of where this is gone.
[00:31:10] Juliet: And I think that is applicable for anybody starting a business at any stage with any level of investment. For me, I suddenly had this light bulb moment of like, I can say no to a client if I don't think they meet our values. And with B Corp especially now, it's It keeps us very, I mean, we already were and that's why we got B Corp, but having worked for this massive amount of luxury brands in my past where they say jump and you say how high you don't realize there's another way.
[00:31:32] Juliet: And now the metric of success was previously, it was base salary and bonus potential and what's my next promotion and where am I going to go to get that? It's. Do I like my team? Are my team happy? Am I learning from them? Are our clients happy? Who are our clients? What are they doing? Is that interesting?
[00:31:46] Juliet: My brain is so much happier. I've worked so much harder than I ever did before, which I didn't think was possible, but it is worth it. And it doesn't, again, that metric of success has been coming up a lot of people's like, well, how many people do you employ? I was like, well, why does that [00:32:00] mean I'm successful?
[00:32:01] Juliet: If actually I can earn more employing less people, that to me is quite smart. So there's many. People that will try and put upon their metric of success of what success is like to them.
[00:32:11] Juliet: But I think anyone shouldn't be afraid to try because it is all doable and you get that freedom and autonomy.
[00:32:18] Aaron Chatterley: Yeah, and for me, do you know what again? It sounds gonna sound kind of crass. I think the whole concept of success is Just almost meaningless because , I say it to my kids all the time, my only wish my kids that they do something that makes them happy and that is success like that, that contentment, if you set out to be a gardener and You're making enough money to fulfill your lifestyle needs and you go to work and you love what you do and you are Content that is no less successful Than being Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos. It should never be measured in toys [00:33:00] or money, or how many employees or what your turnover is. It's surely success could only be measured in the degree of contentment that you have with what you
[00:33:09] Juliet: well, going back to target audience, so many people forget about themselves and they forget to think, well, what,
[00:33:16] Juliet: what am I
[00:33:16] Juliet: doing Yeah. Cause you're living and breathing it all. You're doing all the blood. You are the number one person to protect first. It was head of neuroscience at Oxford University.
[00:33:26] Juliet: I interviewed about sleep and we're talking about it in the last episode as well, saying how you don't protect your sleep. You're running a red light on your business every day. I'm like,
[00:33:33] Juliet: oh goodness, that, and I was putting my business before my health and I thought, well, that's just stupid. And this success.
[00:33:40] Juliet: Idea kept coming around is like my target audience. I have to think about myself first. Cause if I don't look after myself, I can't look after my team and the team can't look after the clients and da la la la. So that audience thing of not neglecting yourself in that whole Venn diagram is so important as well.
[00:33:56] Juliet: Um, something that we do is the guest from the previous [00:34:00] episode has a question for you. And this is actually, um,
[00:34:04] Aaron Chatterley: of a question now. I forgot about that.
[00:34:05] Juliet: don't worry, um, Millie Kendall, who founded
[00:34:09] Juliet: Ruby
[00:34:09] Aaron Chatterley: yeah. I know Millie.
[00:34:10] Juliet: Yeah, British Beauty Council. So it's two beauty eps in a row, but her question for you, and this is really interesting given,
[00:34:16] Aaron Chatterley: She doesn't know it's for me
[00:34:17] Juliet: no, no, she didn't.
[00:34:18] Juliet: I deliberately don't tell people, um, but she, and this is so interesting for what you've done with Feel Unique and what you're about to do with Indu, is when do you know when you're ready to scale? Because there's a lot of pressure on founders being, oh, you've had some success, you should go after investment, you should grow faster.
[00:34:33] Juliet: And people to me was like, why aren't you taking investment? I'm like, but why would I? When would you say? You know that you're ready to scale.
[00:34:42] Aaron Chatterley: I think, and I can only speak from personal experience. I think that's something which is set in advance. So for instance, with Feel Unique, we, set out to create another portrait of beauty. That was our objective. We wanted to create a global beauty retailer. There's no way of [00:35:00] doing that without scaling. The business has to scale. It's a question of when and how. How fast, how much do you put into the, you know, the, the channels that are going to help you scale.
[00:35:10] Aaron Chatterley: And it's, a question of, how you scale without killing the business, because that feeling, it was always a business that had to scale. And similarly with Indu, you know, we want to create a global business for teenagers, the idea of. Should or shouldn't we scale just, it's just anathema it, you know, we have to scale it, but it's a question of managing it, you know, the temptation would be to go into, you know, multiple retailers around the world as quickly as possible, but that's going to cost a fortune and it might work, it might not,, there's a whole bunch of other things to think about.
[00:35:45] Aaron Chatterley: So I think.
[00:35:47] Juliet: So,
[00:35:49] Aaron Chatterley: thing is that the world has changed so much that there's there's so much pressure to scale and there's nothing wrong. And again, going back to your idea of success or [00:36:00] your idea of, you know, What you're setting out to do if your objective is to create, let's use the beauty analogy to create a skincare range.
[00:36:10] Aaron Chatterley: Um, but you don't want the pressure of employing hundreds of people and you don't want the pressure of managing multiple retailers. And you know that you can, sell 150, 200, 000 pounds worth of product a year and, make yourself an income of 80, 90 grand.
[00:36:25] Aaron Chatterley: And that's all you need and that's going to make you happy. And you know, you're going to serve a base of people who would love your product. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with starting a gardening business and making yourself 50, 60 grand a year and being happy. Not everything has to scale.
[00:36:44] Aaron Chatterley: So if the business that you're setting out to needs the scale to, to be a thing, then that's fine,
[00:36:50] Juliet: So you're ready when you've got it in your plan and you're proactively going towards
[00:36:54] Aaron Chatterley: yeah, but we, we knew before we even said, right, we're doing , [00:37:00] this is a scaling business.
[00:37:01] Juliet: Would you have had a plan of where you need to make this many sales in this market to then invest in this new market? And
[00:37:07] Aaron Chatterley: I'd love to say that we were that smart, but no, a lot of it was kind of opportunistic, you know, we, we found the channels that worked. So we knew that if we put more money into that, we would generate that,
[00:37:20] Juliet: Mm,
[00:37:21] Aaron Chatterley: you know, that return and that cost per acquisition. So. we can put more money into that. ,and a lot of the growth that we saw from feeling unique was quite opportunistic.
[00:37:31] Aaron Chatterley: There were there were markets that kind of fell into our lap like we did really, really well in Scandinavia quite early on
[00:37:37] Aaron Chatterley: reactively. But then we knew from seeing that reaction we knew that then putting more money into marketing in those territories, was super effective.
[00:37:45] Juliet: Thank you. And what would your question be for the next guest?
[00:37:48] Aaron Chatterley: Would be, when you had the idea for your business, at what point did it become something that you had to do? What were the criteria in your head that made you think, yeah, this [00:38:00] is something that we really should push forward with?
[00:38:02] Aaron Chatterley: I'm going to let you paraphrase that because I still feel like I'm not asking the question well.
[00:38:07] Juliet: No, I don't know how I get it. It's totally fine. No, thank you. And I think it's really interesting because like Jo Fairley, I interviewed her from Green and Blacks. She said, I have hundreds of ideas. I give them away. I don't want them. I've done enough. I don't want to do another Green and Blacks.
[00:38:21] Juliet: And it's interesting. I think once you've got a taste for it you want to just test the water with things. And when you've. A job that's keeping your head above water and it's affording you an opportunity to play and see and test and learn those ideas. It's quite fun now because it's like, well, I could technically do anything, but what's that going to be and why?
[00:38:42] Juliet: And do I want to, or should I, or could I, you know, all those questions, but it's all part of learning. It's brilliant, and that's why you are a serial entrepreneur, which I would agree with.
[00:38:53] Aaron Chatterley: Well, this is the last one.
[00:38:56] Juliet: No, everyone says that it was Asher from Sherbert Taxis. It's he's onto [00:39:00] his fourth business, and he said, no, once you've done it, you can't stop. You've got this like itch you have to scratch. And for him, it's the same thing. It's like, is that idea going to come to fruition?
[00:39:09] Juliet: Okay. Yeah. Go, go, go, go.
[00:39:11] Aaron Chatterley: And, and that's exactly it for me. I didn't want anything to do. It's just some ideas are just too, the itch is too great. And I think that's probably the question. At what point do you know that that itch has to be scratched? Because lots of them don't get scratched. They get thrown away.
[00:39:27] Aaron Chatterley: Like you say,
[00:39:28] Juliet: amazing. Thank you so much, Aaron.
[00:39:30] Aaron Chatterley: It's an absolute pleasure. Hopefully there's something you can use in all that.
[00:39:34] Juliet: That's
[00:39:37] Juliet Fallowfield: I really hope you've enjoyed this conversation, you can find a recap of all the advice so kindly shared by guests in the show notes, along with our contact details.
[00:39:44] Juliet Fallowfield: We'd love it if you could rate and review or share this podcast because it really does help other people discover it. To incentivise this a little, I would very happily offer you one of our PR guides on how to share editorial coverage legally, just DM us or send us an email. Hello at fallowfieldmason.[00:40:00]
[00:40:00] Juliet Fallowfield: com with review in the title and we'll share it on.
[00:40:03]