Felix: Today I'm joined by Keya James from Taylor Beauty. Taylor Beauty sells high-quality ingredient beauty products that are safe for all ages and was started in 2016 and based out of Atlanta, Georgia. Welcome, Keya.
Keya: Thank you for having me, Felix.
Felix: This all started before the business, everything, it all started from YouTube, so tell us more about that. What was the beginning of the idea for the business?
Keya: When I first got started, I actually had a YouTube channel. I was in grad school at the time and I just wanted to do something as a hobby. I started a YouTube channel and I wanted to document my natural hair journey. I stopped chemically relaxing my hair at that time, so I wanted to show my audience how I was taking care of my hair and the natural ingredients that I was using in my hair as well.
I also had my daughter in 2013, so I started showing my audience how to use products that I was creating on her hair as well, and they saw how both my hair and her hair was growing from the products. My audience started asking for the products, if I could make the products. At that time, YouTube was where people look for information. It was different from now because Instagram was unpopular. A lot of people were doing research by just searching for exactly what they wanted on YouTube and they would stumble across my videos.
That's pretty much how it got started. I was doing it as a hobby and I slowly began to sell the products.
Felix: Awesome. This YouTube channel and your audience, you started from scratch. You had no followers, no audience at the time when you first decided to start the YouTube channel as this hobby?
Keya: I didn't have an audience and Instagram wasn't even a thing at that time.
Felix: Awesome. Tell us about that. How quickly did it take off, from the first couple of videos you put out, how soon before you started seeing that other people were interested in this information that you're putting out?
Keya: I was doing YouTube for about two years before I actually started selling the product and I started selling the product slowly. I was just doing it in my kitchen and I created an Etsy store at that time, so I was just pretty much just doing it for fun. It somehow turned into a business because the demand quickly grew because people were seeing how well the products worked on my YouTube channel, as well as the testimonials from other customers. About a year and a half into doing it as a hobby, that's when we turned it into a business and really branded everything, got our trademark, got our LLC, and turned it from a hobby into a business.
Felix: Got it. You mentioned that people were reaching out to you asking you to make the product. I'm assuming that was when you first started thinking, oh, there could be a business behind this. Initially when you were doing these YouTube videos, they were all just you're using products that were homemade?
Keya: Yes. They were homemade. I was making them in my kitchen at that time. It was me, my husband, who also encouraged me to start the business, and my mom. We would spend hours during the weekend, 20 plus hours during the weekend, just making products in the kitchen just to be able to fulfill the orders for the following week.
At that time, we only had, in our first year, we only had three products, but it was so time-consuming to produce those products because the way we were producing them, it takes a lot of time to create those products. So, we would just spend a lot of time on the weekends, and then during the weekday, I would fulfill my orders. I was still working at the time, so I would go to the post office to fulfill my orders for that week.
Felix: Between the time that you decided that, oh, there is a potential to create a product for this, create a business for it because people are asking you, how long did it take you before you had a product that you were ready to start selling?
Keya: It took about a couple of months because I already knew how to make the product and we didn't really start purchasing a lot of equipment until the demand grew. So, within those couple of months, I still had to set up a site, I still had to purchase more ingredients to make the products, as well as create the labels. In the early stages of our business, we were actually creating the labels from the printer at home, just had to purchase components. So, it took about two months to really get a look of what the products look like before we could actually begin selling those products.
Felix: Got it. These days, I think you have a whole product line of beauty products that you're selling, but when you first launched, what was it that you were selling?
Keya: I was selling Everything Butter, which is still our number one selling product. It's a shea butter that you can pretty much use for everything. When I first introduced it to my audience, that's when I was using it on my hair, and I was also using it during my pregnancy so that I didn't have any stretch marks.
Felix: Got it.
Keya: Then, I started using it on my daughter's hair, and so that was the first product that we launched. Then from there, we started creating hair oils, moisturizing mist, shampoos, and conditioners.
Felix: Got it. Definitely want to get into the product development process and how you decide what to build next or what to create next in a bit. But when you first started with this first product shea butter, how much inventory did you create before launching it to your audience?
Keya: To be completely honest, at the time, I just wanted to really just give it out to my audience, so there was no strategy behind it. Now, everything we do has a complete strategy, we control our inventory. But at that time we were just getting a feel of how many people wanted the products, and we would produce based on that. When we were purchasing raw ingredients, we really were just purchasing small batches at that time, small batches to make pretty much anywhere between 50 to 100 products. As that grew, we would have to purchase more on a larger scale.
Felix: I think this is an approach that I think a lot of people can appreciate, that also might not want to take a huge risk at first by having a huge product run, product line, before seeing there's demand. Can you tell us more about that? How did you get a feel for, almost dip your toe in the water to realize, okay, there is demand and we can keep on scaling this up? Talk to us about that. How did you measure that there was demand for the product?
Keya: We measured demand by just pretty much looking at our sales month-over-month and then year-over-year. My husband is also the co-founder of the company and he's the COO, so he has a background in finance. He has a finance degree and I have a business degree, so being able to really utilize our strengths really helped us to figure out how can we strategize and come up with a plan to make sure that we're not running out of inventory and to make sure we're not over purchasing inventory, so really just being able to forecast what was going to come next. Looking at our data for the last six months, looking at our data for the last year and really analyzing that, and when we were purchasing components and raw materials, really purchasing based on what the forecast would look like.
Felix: Got it. Now, talk to us about the timeline about this, because we mentioned at the start of this, that you started the business about five years ago, and it sounded like you took a methodical and slow approach to make sure that you were making the right moves. Tell us about that. At what point did you start seeing that, wow, this is really taking off and let's invest more time and go more full-time with this business?
Keya: I think it was about, I want to say about a year and a half into the business. That's when we made our first six figures. This, remember, this was based solely on just being able to have an audience on YouTube. We were both working full-time jobs, so we really, at that time, weren't paying ourselves. We were continuously reinvested into the business. We had the money to, after about the second year, we had the money to really turn things around.
That meant not printing out labels at home, but actually working with someone who could print the labels for us. That meant not producing products at home, but really finding a good manufacturer who could manufacture the products and use my same formula and do it at a larger scale. Just really, we took our time within the first two years of the business to really understand how to run a business, how to do everything, understand our customers, and then slowly move onto different phases of the business.
After about the second year of business, that's when we started doing a lot of trade shows, so really doing a lot of brand awareness. That really helped our brand because it took it from being on YouTube and word of mouth to really being able to be in front of our target customer. Then slowly working with influencers and meeting with different buyers who actually wanted to put our products into the store.
It was a slow process in the beginning, but I'm glad that we took those steps because each year we learned a lot about how to effectively run a business, so that when we got to those other steps within our business, we were prepared for that.
Felix: Tell us more about that. I think, especially in the early days, what were some of the biggest lessons that, or most valuable lessons that you learned early on that helped you get to the next stage and thrive in the next stage of your business?
Keya: I think the biggest thing was manufacturing, especially when you create a product at home and you want to scale and you want to mass produce that product. For us, that was a huge challenge for us because with our products we use premium ingredients, and a lot of these ingredients, it's very difficult to find a manufacturer who wants to use your exact same formula. So, it took us a while to find a manufacturer who would do that for us. This really took me actually going to manufacturers, sitting down with them, bringing my equipment, showing them exactly how I was able to make this product so that there were no changes to the original formulas that I had.
Felix: Got it. I want to take a step back a bit, and you mentioned the six-figure mark that you hit about a year and a half into the business that you credit a lot of that to having an audience and that audience on YouTube. Can you give us an idea of how big the audience was at this time when you were able to break into the six-figure revenue range?
Keya: Honestly, it wasn't that big. It wasn't that big. I mean, someone may not think that an audience of about, I think I had less than 20,000 subscribers on YouTube. They may not think that that's a big audience, but now you have people who have millions and millions of subscribers on YouTube. But the thing about it is, I had a small audience, but I had a really good connection with my audience. I had a good connection with my audience and I wanted to educate people. That is what came first. When I would do my videos, and still to this day, I still do YouTube videos. When I get in front of a camera, I really just want to educate people. I think that's because I have a background in mental health, and I'm always trying to figure out how I can find a solution to a problem and really be able to explain that step-by-step to help someone.
When I would get on a camera, it was just being an authentic conversation with my audience. Because I was able to have those conversations and really explain things, I think that's what really helped because not only is she showing me this product, she's explaining how this product is used, and she's also showing the results behind this product. Being able to do videos, respond to comments, respond to emails, really interact with my audience and my customers, I think that's what really helped us get to that six-figure mark.
Felix: Hmm, so not the size of the audience, but the connection with each subscriber, each member of that audience is what allowed you to do so much with an audience that is not as large as what you might expect is needed to get to the six-figure mark. You mentioned that the key thing here is that to build that kind of connection is through education, really trying to solve problems that your audience, your customers have. Tell us more about that. How do you identify what problems there are that you can create video, create content about?
Keya: Just really talking to our customers. We talk to our customers in so many different ways. Also, keep in mind, I'm a consumer as well. I am a person who uses these products. I'm a person who struggles with being able to grow my hair, so just really listening to what people have to say. The good thing is we have such good customers that they'll actually go on YouTube as well and do reviews of our products. So we watch the reviews, we read the comments, we attend trade shows. This was before COVID as well. We were able to attend a lot of trade shows and talk to our customers and really figure out what's going on, and by being able to do that, you figure out what type of problems your consumer has.
Felix: I think for a product like yours that's very, I guess, a personal use product, you mentioned things like testimonials and reviews that your customers are even posting on YouTube, they matter a lot. Do you do anything to highlight these testimonials or these reviews, or what are some ways that you've been able to give this social proof that, "Hey, this actually works for all of these different people. That's not just coming from me, the owner, the founder, but it's also from the customers," how do you make sure that you amplify, I guess, those reviews and your audience's voice?
Keya: We do that in a lot of different ways. One of our best ways that we do that is through Judge.me, which is an app on Shopify that we use. We use Judge.me, and with that app, customers are able to post pictures as well as write reviews. I think these are really important because we also run a lot of Facebook ads.
So, sometimes we might have customers who come from our Facebook ads and they have no idea about the business. We still try to keep that organic approach to our marketing where you might even see a Facebook ad of myself talking about a problem that I have with my hair, showing the product and having a solution. With that, people usually go straight to our website product page, and on the product page, you see reviews from customers, you see before and after pictures, you see written testimonials, and you even see those in a lot of comments under the ads on Facebook.
Felix: Got it. You had mentioned to us in the pre-interview about how, today, you now understand how to run your Facebook ads and everything, but one kind of setback that you had early on was hiring for these skills before you knew how to do it yourself. Tell us about that. Tell us about that lesson. I think it's an important one that others have faced or that the others are that, maybe, about to face. Tell us more about your experience with having to learn certain skills before hiring out for it.
Keya: I think early on in our business, one of the biggest mistakes was that we hired people, but we didn't understand their roles. So, after we rebranded our company, two years after that, we started hiring different social media management agencies, and they were not producing results. This was very frustrating because we saved up all this money from all the profits that we were making, and we were paying these agencies to have a return on investment and there was no return on investment. I had to take full accountability for that because how can I manage someone if I don't understand the job that they're doing? How can this person present data to me if I don't understand how to read the data.
So, I started investing in myself. I learned how to do Facebook ads and it was a challenge in the beginning, but once I really learned how to do it, that's when our business really, really took off. That's when our business took off. That's when our e-commerce store took off because I was able to learn how to create ads and how to read data in order for the ads to work. So, being able to do that, Klayvio is an app that I love that integrates really well with my Shopify store. I attended Klayvio events. Just being able to invest my time and really learn, really is what helped me to understand how to market better and how to have a higher return on our investment as far as marketing goes.
Felix: Got it. Tell us more about that process of learning, and you mentioned a big piece of the speed which the business took off was related to understanding more about buying ads. Tell us more about how you, well, not how, but what you learn about how to create ads? Can you tell us more about that?
Keya: I learned how to understand who my target customer is and how to speak to my target customer. This was really important because at the time I thought I know who my target customer was, but once you really start learning and digging deep, you can really narrow down your target person, your target customer down to what type of stores they shop in, their education level, things like that. Once I was able to actually understand that, we started really being very specific in how we spoke to our audience. Because I was speaking on YouTube, now we had to transition over to Facebook Marketing. Speaking to a YouTube audience, it's kind of the same, but it's not really the same. Just learning that really helped me to understand the tone, the voice of the brand, and how to be strategic when we started producing these ads.
Felix: Got it. You mentioned that you thought you knew who your target customer was, but then you learn more about them as you spend more time trying to understand. Tells me more about that. What were the differences between what you thought who your customers were, then who ended up actually being?
Keya: At that time, we thought our customers were people like myself. Because I was using the products and because I love the products, I thought my customer was just like me. That's a little bit different because my customer does have textured hair. My customer loves ingredients, but my customer may not necessarily have my hair type or my customer may not necessarily have the same exact struggles that I have.
I don't want to just speak to myself, I want to speak to my customers. So, I had to really look through the data and also create a quiz on my website. We put a quiz on the site where we just wanted to really learn as much as possible about our customer. We started asking questions about their age, what problems they were having, do you have kids, do you have dry hair? Really just asking a whole bunch of questions to really narrow down who our customer is, so that we weren't just targeting just myself, but really targeting people who wanted to purchase our products.
Felix: Got it. Now you mentioned that the quiz helped, and you also mentioned looking at the data. Can you say more about that? What were you looking at exactly? If someone out there wants to learn more about who is their actual customer, but they haven't gone to length of creating a quiz yet or haven't gotten results back yet from running this kind of quiz or survey, what data were you looking at to help you understand more about your customer?
Keya: Some of the data that we were looking at was from Typeform. Typeform is an app through the Shopify store. Basically what Typeform form is, is you can create any type of quiz that you want and you can either put open-ended answers in the quiz, or you could put yes or no answers in the quiz. We just have a series of questions that we ask, but the biggest data that we get from that quiz is what is your biggest hair struggle? Because we are an education-based brand, we want to provide that education piece first. We want to know how we can help you solve this problem and how we can speak to our audience. So, Typeform gives us all of that data. Not only does it help us to understand the customer, how old they are, what problems they're having, but it also helps us to be able to speak specifically to them because they've already told us this is what's going on.
Felix: Got it. You use Typeform for the quiz, and you mentioned your most important and most valuable answers come from the question about what's your biggest hair struggle, and I think this can be applied to any industry in any business, asking your customer about what's their biggest struggle specific to your niche. How diverse of answers do you get when you ask that question?
Keya: We get a lot of diverse questions, but usually we find that there's about four questions that everyone usually struggles with in our industry, and that's just that they want healthy hair. We really try to figure out what questions are uncommon outside of those four questions? The good thing is that not only can we address those concerns, but it gives us new ideas and it helps us become more innovative in the way we talk to our customers, as well as when we think about product development for future products.
Felix: Got it. Definitely those two things make sense. I want to talk about how you use this information to inform how you talk to your customers. I think you hinted on this about it being an education- first business, education-first brand, you're probably creating a YouTube content, other content to address those questions. How does it affect things like your ads? Do you use this information in any way to change the way you do your marketing when it comes to paid ads?
Keya: Yes. Yes. When we do paid ads, we actually have a funnel that we use, and usually at the top of the funnel, what we do is we have that education piece first because we realize that what we've realized in the past in looking at that data is we realize that sometimes people really, they'll have products, but they really don't understand how to use it. So, education comes first.
When we're doing the ads, we want to just really just be, on the ads, nothing overly commercial. Sometimes, I'll even be in my bathroom showing the product, showing how the product is used, explaining it and showing the results that we get. From there, we realize that when we look at the data we want to convert, that's the number one thing we want to do when we have an ad. We want to make sure that there's a returner aspect and that converts.
So, having that social proof and really not only showing myself using the products, but the next part of the funnel might include having influencers on ads. Influencers really help a customer see someone that might look like them. My customer may not look like me, but they may look like an influencer who's used this product.
We want to show a variation of people who've used the product and the results that they have, as well as when we're bringing them from Facebook, we bring them directly to the product page that has the product reviews so that they can see other customers. They can see pretty much that education piece because now the customers are educating them on how the product works, as well as visually being able to see it as well.
Felix: Got it. I think this is really important, so I want to break this down a bit more. Your funnel basically is that you take a lot of the questions, the problems that you're discovering your customers have, whether it just be through conversations or them filling out your Typeform quiz and getting the results from there, then you're creating content around it, which sounds like education answering these questions. Then you retarget the people that have seen those ads with influencers that might look like them or just basically a variety of influencers that allow the customers to see, oh, they're just like me, they have the same type of hair like me. Always, the call to action, you're trying to drive them to a product page, which again, has more education, has more social proof from your customers in their reviews?
Keya: Yes. Correct.
Felix: Got it. Now these almost top of the funnel education ads, how long are they, how much time, because it sounds like you obviously need more than maybe a few seconds, obviously, to educate or show them the product, show them how you're using it. Tell us more about that. How long-form are the ads?
Keya: We don't do anything more than a minute, so we want to be straight to the point, and we want to do it in a minute or less. But the goal within the first 10 seconds is to show the results. We don't want people to feel like they're being sold anything. We love the product so much, and we know that they work that we want people to see the results first. Once they see the results, we tell them how we got these results, but we never keep it over a minute because with Facebook ads, anything over a minute, you can't use that on Instagram, and people are on Instagram just as much as they're on Facebook, so we want to make sure we can get that on both platforms.
Felix: You said something that's really important there, which was that you guys love the product so much and you have the results, which makes the marketing and selling of a product so much easier once you have something that you truly believe in yourself.
Keya: Exactly.
Felix: You mentioned that one of the steps that you took, again pre-COVID, was around these trade shows. Tell us more about that. What were you doing at these trade shows? How did it lead to growing the business?
Keya: Trade shows, so our industry, which is the textured hair care industry, natural hair industry, does a lot of trade shows. They do trade shows for consumers. There's a big trade show that comes to Atlanta that's based out of Atlanta that we do every year, and everyone in our industry is at these hair shows. During those hair shows, we have a booth. That's a big investment as well, because when you're at these hair shows, you're competing for customers' attention. We have a booth, we have models, we have stylists, and then we also have enticing offers for people to try the products.
The other good thing about trade shows is that there's a lot of buyers and there's a lot of people within the industry that's looking to make business with brands like myself, to either help grow their brand, or put them in stores. We've met the person who does our labels there. We've met so many people that have been able to help our brand grow, but we've also been able to really engage with our customers at these trade shows and bring awareness to our brand, to the natural hair space.
Felix: Awesome. You had mentioned that everyone in the industry is going to these trade shows, which was leading me to wonder, what ways are your products differentiated from the customers? What have you found ways to differentiate yourself from all the other products in the space?
Keya: It really has to do with the ingredients in our products. Because we use premium ingredients in our products, you don't find these ingredients in our competitors' products. Because I'm really conscious about my health, early on when I started the business, I became conscious about what I was eating and I started eating a plant-based diet. So, we put ingredients that people haven't heard of before, like fenugreek, black seed oil, gotu kola extract. These ingredients are not common in our industry, but they're common in different cultures where you see people with long hair, shiny hair, beautiful hair.
Really just learning the benefits of those ingredients and putting them in our products, we noticed that people are using these ingredients, but one, they're really expensive, and two, it's also DIY. So just being able to use these exotic ingredients that have been proven to have results in our products is really what differentiates ourselves from our competitors.
Felix: Is it something that you have to always stay on top of to continue to differentiate yourself? Do you find that you've carved out this lane and that no one's really encroaching on, or do you have to constantly do things to remain differentiated?
Keya: I think, yes, we constantly have to do that. But for myself, it's easy for myself because I'm a person who I'll shop at a farmer's market as opposed to shopping at a grocery store, or I'm just a regular person who loves Facebook groups, but they may be about health or fitness. So, because this is my lifestyle, I've become familiar with this space of using more medicinal stuff or 100% natural products. Because I really live that lifestyle, it's really easy for me, and I'm learning more and more. Then I'm like, "Well, this would be really good for hair, this would be really good for skin, or this would be really good for that. Let's try to create a product." I'm always testing these products out. I'm always testing the ingredients out behind the scenes before I'm bringing them to our manufacturers to mass produce.
Felix: Got it. It is something that you need to stay on top of, but it's, again, you mentioned, easy for you because that is already your lifestyle. You're always interested in learning more about different ingredients, natural and high quality. Tell us about the product development process once you recognize, oh, this is a new ingredient that I came across that you think is going to be good to try or to try to create a product around? Walk us through what happens once you have this idea for a new product.
Keya: Once I have an idea for a new product, I'm definitely testing out the ingredients, trying to figure out, for example, our deep conditioner has fenugreek in it and fenugreek is a seed. In order to put it into our products, it has to become a powder. Really just figuring out how to take this ingredient, transform it into something else and put it into a hair product. That means me experimenting, still going back to my kitchen experimenting with these products, using them in my hair, using them in my daughter's hair, giving them to family and friends and testing them out for a while before I even bring them over to my manufacturer, because one thing I never want to do is compromise any of my formulas. That's something that I've always done since the beginning of the business, really just creating products and testing them on myself.
But as the business scaled, I've been fortunate enough to find a manufacturer that specializes in textured hair and also work closely with the chemist so that, not only am I producing this great product, but when you have these natural ingredients, the last thing you want them to do is to go bad. So, a chemist is helping me to make sure that my products remain stable and they don't get any mold or bacteria in them.
Once I've pretty much tested those products, which can sometimes take a year or two. My last line, I tested them for two years before I brought them to the market. Then that meant I had to work with the chemist and the chemist had to make sure these ingredients would remain stable because my chemist wasn't even familiar with these ingredients. So, it takes a lot of time to do product development before we even bring them to the market.
Felix: Wow. You mentioned that you've taken years sometimes to test new products, new ingredients. What do you look for to feel confident that this makes sense to move forward to go to manufacturing with it?
Keya: I look for results. The number one thing is results. Results is the number one thing for me, because I want the product to do exactly what it says it does. If I know that an ingredient is good to help strengthen my hair, or to help strengthen the hair, I'm looking for results. I'm looking to test people who have this same exact problem and ask them, "Hey, do you want to try this product out? I know you have this struggle. Can you give me some feedback?" I want your feedback. I want the good, the bad, and the ugly before I even bring it to market. So, the results are the number one thing that I'm looking for.
Felix: Got it. Once you do bring to manufacturing, how long does it usually take for that to turn around from the time that you have these instructions that you're bringing to the manufacturer, these ingredients, how long does it take before any finished product is ready to go that's on a shelf for someone to buy?
Keya: That can take up to a year as well. It can take up to a year as well, because when you have a product, now you have to think about what is this product going to look like in packaging? What message am I going to send to the customer about this product? Do we like the consistency of the product? What can we do to change the consistency of the product?
One thing that I learned from attending trade shows and really being face-to-face with customers and interacting with customers, the most challenging part about having a product is the smell. The smell is the biggest thing that people are always concerned about. Before they even use the product, the first thing they want to do is smell the product. So, we spent a lot of time just figuring out what we want this product to smell like?
Because we use natural ingredients, we use essential oils for scents. One person may love lemongrass and another person may like lavender. Smell plays a big role because smell can make a person feel a certain way, and if they feel good about the smell, they feel confident about the product. If they don't like the smell, they don't like the product. Believe it or not, during that year of working with the manufacturer, the biggest thing is scent. How is the product going to smell for the customer?
Felix: Oh, wow. Interesting. That makes a lot of sense, that's almost the first reaction that anyone has, what does this smell like and that could impact whether they're open or not to the product even before they even try it out in the first place.
Keya: Exactly.
Felix: How many products do you have now? How many products are in the product line?
Keya: Right now we have 14 products in our skus. I'm sorry, let me answer that again.
Felix: Sure.
Keya: Right now we have 14 products. We have our original product line, which we started at the beginning of the business. Then we have our Golden Herbal Collection, and we also have plant-based hair vitamins, as well as one of our newest products that we launched recently was a clay detox shampoo bar.
Felix: Awesome. When you do have these new products that you're creating, how do you launch it to your audience and your customers?
Keya: We have a full rollout. As I stated earlier, when we first started the business, it was a hobby so there was no real strategy behind what we were doing. Now it's pretty much a big strategy on what we do. We figure out how we're going to let our existing audience know. Because when you're coming out with a new product, your existing audience is the one who already wants the product first. So, we're figuring out how we're going to give it to our customers first, and what does that roll out look like? What does the marketing plan for that rollout look like? What does the digital marketing plan look like? What does the press look like? What does email marketing look like? What is the sound of that, and just really having a full rollout of that launch.
Felix: Got it. You said a big part of this is around packaging as well, which sounds like another kind of first impression similar to smell that a lot of people look for. What are some lessons that you've learned along the way about how to improve or to make a better packaging for your products?
Keya: Packaging was really important to us when we started going to trade shows and we started meeting with buyers. Ultimately, our goal was to do retail. Right now we're in Walmart stores, so one of the things that we wanted to really focus on is how will packaging look in a retail space? Will the customer be able to clearly understand what this product does? Will this person really be able to identify our brand?
When we started developing packaging, one, we wanted to make sure it was good for retail because that was our overall goal, but we wanted to make sure all of our call-outs were on the packaging, what it does, who it was for and really be able to easily identify our brand if we were to do another line. If we did, for instance, our Ultimate Collection has pink colors, how could we do another line, and our Golden Arbor Collection has orange colors, how we have those two lines but the packaging looks the same and the customer can still identify that this is our brand?
Felix: Got it. Another big piece, I think, is around packaging, and you've mentioned too about how you've found a lot of buyers through the trade shows, was your success in getting into Walmart? Tell us more about that. What was the experience like to get into a big retailer like Walmart?
Keya: It was a good experience, but when you enter into retail, it's running a completely different business because for a long time we were running an e-commerce business and a lot of things had to change. So, in order to prepare for Walmart, we had to figure out how to scale even more so that we could fulfill these large purchase orders.
Felix: What changes did you make along the way to support this new buyer?
Keya: We didn't change anything about the products. We wanted to make sure that our packaging really stood apart. We didn't change our labels, but we increased the font on our labels so that people could easily read them. With e-commerce, everything is done behind the scenes, so you don't really have to have a lot of staff. You can actually outsource staff to fulfill your orders, while as we grew to be in Walmart, we had to hire more staff. We had to bring more awareness to our brand. Our messaging has to look a little bit different because now we're not pushing people to go to the website, well, we're still pushing people to go to the website, but we also want to push people to go to the store. So, having different marketing goals is something that had to change as well.
Felix: Awesome. I'll talk a little about the website, which is at taylorbeautyproducts.com. You mentioned a couple of apps that you're using, Klaviyo, Judge.me, Typeform for the survey. Any other apps or tools that you use to help run the website or the business?
Keya: Yes. I love Typeform. I love Klayvio, Judge.me. Also, we use the Store Locator website because we are in select Walmart stores. We want to make sure the customer goes to the right Walmart stores to find our products, as well as we're also in independent retailers. It's called Store Locator, but having that on our website is one of the most beneficial apps because we can send customers who may not want to purchase online directly to the store.
Felix: Awesome. Again, taylorbeautyproducts.com is the website, and I'll leave with this last question, what do you think has been the biggest lesson that you've learned over the past year that you want to put into action in the coming year?
Keya: I think the biggest lesson now that I've learned in the past year, I spend so much time running my business and really doing a lot with my business. I told you early on, when we started to grow, I started to hire out and that wasn't successful for me because I had to learn. But during the past couple of years in my business, I've learned so much. I've learned so much about marketing, I've learned so much about Facebook ads, how to run a Shopify store, how to do all of these things. The biggest lesson I've learned is now delegating. Now, in order for my business to continue to scale, to continue to grow, in order for me to continue to be creative and really focus on product development, understanding my customers, now I have to, building this team is really important for me. So, learning how to manage people is something that I've had to learn to do in the past year, manage a team, manage other parts of my business and really figure out how to scale, even more as the business grows.
Felix: Awesome. Thank you so much for your time, Keya. That was amazing.
Keya: Thank you.