In 2016 David Gaylord was a Shopify worker in search of a aspect hustle. Then he got here up with a cool thought: skincare lotions for hair elimination alongside bikini traces. The enterprise title was even funkier: Bushbalm.
Quick ahead to 2023, and Bushbalm is booming, promoting lotions and trimmers on to hundreds of shoppers and wholesale to Ulta Magnificence and three,000 waxing salons. It spends a whopping $200,000 per thirty days on Fb adverts.
In our current dialog, I requested Gaylord about gross sales channels, advertising and marketing, and, sure, the title. The audio for your entire dialogue is embedded under. The transcript is edited for readability and size.
Eric Bandholz: Inform us what you do.
David Gaylord: I’m the co-founder and CEO of Bushbalm. We give attention to bikini line skincare — below-the-belt merchandise for ingrown hairs for razor burn. We even have a trimmer for down there. Our major enterprise is skincare, whether or not oils, exfoliants, or serums. We have now a hydrogel masks known as The Vajacial, which is sort of common.
We launched in 2016. Earlier than, I labored in my household enterprise in Canada promoting hardwood flooring. Once I was in college, my dad needed to attempt ecommerce. I assumed it was ridiculous. However I did what he stated and checked out platforms comparable to BigCommerce and Magento. We selected Shopify as a result of it was Canadian.
4 years later, I graduated from college and obtained a job at Shopify. From there, my companions and I began Bushbalm as a cool thought. It took us 4 years to realize traction. We didn’t give up our jobs till 2021. We had been fully bootstrapped and stay that approach at the moment.
Through the 4 years, we spent little or no on advertising and marketing. We did an Etsy present, which was good for speaking to of us and studying what they needed to say about us. Once we spoke about “pubic oil,” they stated, “That’s disgusting.” We tried “bush oil,” and so they didn’t like that both. We obtained extra into skincare and requested questions like, “Do you get waxed? You in all probability have irritation.” They usually’d say, “Yeah, completely.” In order that’s the place we centered the enterprise. In 2020 and 2021, we pushed onerous on Fb adverts. Within the final two years, we’ve leaned away from that. However we nonetheless spend no less than $200,000 on Fb month-to-month.
Bandholz: Do you get a lot friction with the title of Bushbalm?
Gaylord: We interviewed somebody for a job right here who stated, ” I believe you guys ought to change the title. And we had been like, “You’re not employed.” Plenty of of us we speak to understand that we’re blunt. The model is form of in your face with our TikTok channel. Generally, one in 100 folks will say, “That’s gross.” The opposite 99% say, “Why is it gross? Everyone has these issues.” So, I believe the title’s fairly highly effective long-term.
Bandholz: You’re exploring brick and mortar, organising your personal salons.
Gaylord: We’re about 50% direct-to-consumer, after which 25% is wholesale from promoting to about 3,000 waxing salons. We’re additionally in Ulta Magnificence, the large retailer, and Amazon.
We’re trying to double down in our personal physical-store waxing salons. We’re not right here to construct 100 salons and be an enormous chain. In a studio, we’ll study extra concerning the merchandise and the way folks use them. We’ve been extra keen on the content material aspect. We don’t do a lot on YouTube. We do a variety of TikTok and Instagram, however having an in-store house is one thing we’re attempting to determine.
We have now a superb path to long-term wholesale development. Ulta Magnificence was the primary domino to fall. They’re superior. What’s good about Ulta is the shave part we’re in, which is principally the identical model as CVS, Walgreens, Goal, and Walmart. 5 years in the past, the taboo was so robust that nobody could be round us due to the title. Now everybody’s like, yeah, that’s cool, you guys are funky. I believe Manscaped, for male hygiene, paved the best way for the taboo to go away.
Bandholz: Stroll us by way of your content material manufacturing.
Gaylord: We have now just a few of us on our staff who join with waxing salons and movie content material, or we’ll pay the salons for a photograph and video shoot. Often, 80% of the stuff doesn’t work, however 20% is great. We’re trying to scale. The necessity for content material these days is insane. It’s the toughest a part of Fb adverts.
We employed a part-time in-house aesthetician, a skincare professional. That has been an incredible addition. She helps us with content material. In any other case, a variety of it’s sourced from content material producers. The perfect factor we’ve completed is ask photographers to subsidize picture shoots. They get photographs, and we get photographs. Every thing works out. Acquiring movies that approach is difficult, however it works for images.
We’ll purchase content material from of us. Communication model, character, and leisure are so essential. It’s extra intriguing to comply with alongside an individual’s journey as a substitute of, for example, the artwork of doing a leg wax. That sort of video is perhaps attention-grabbing, however constructing a personality or persona to develop a model does higher.
The iOS and Fb privateness modifications had been a straightforward hurdle for us. We’ve obtained 3,000 wholesale accounts, with one salesperson and one account supervisor. So it’s a super-efficient lead and really automated. Of us are keen to seek out one thing that works. There are not any distributors for it both. So it’s very area of interest. The U.S. has 10 occasions extra waxing and nail salons than Starbucks shops. I believe it’s 330,000 salons, which is mind-blowing.
Direct-to-consumer was about 95% of the enterprise three years in the past; now it’s 50%. So we’re rising far more on this skilled channel. And Ulta is doing properly.
Bandholz: Do you are worried about promoting attribution and monitoring?
Gaylord: On the wholesale aspect, it’s onerous as a result of after we promote on Fb for our Ulta enterprise, we don’t get gross sales knowledge for per week — each Monday at 8:00 a.m. So we may run Fb adverts on a brand new launch at Ulta with out realizing in the event that they’re working.
Bandholz: The place can folks assist you?
Gaylord: Our web site is Bushbalm.com. We’re on Amazon and Ulta. I’m on LinkedIn.