Exit Strategy S1:E5 // Paul Tran - How Manscaped Created a Nine-Figure Business
Manscaped's Marketing, Product, and Growth Secrets - June 18, 2020 (almost 5 years ago) • 01:13:01
Transcript:
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Moiz Ali | Welcome to episode 5 of the Exit Strategy podcast. I'm here with Paul Tran. Paul, you're the CEO and founder of Manscaped. Manscaped, you know, started in 2015. Manscaped sells products that help men groom their groins, is that right?
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Paul Tran | that's that's perfectly right that there was white space | |
Moiz Ali | And some of the products that you sell, just so people have clarity, are the **Lawn Mower**, which helps men trim their pubes, deodorant for your balls, and a foot odor product as well. What's the foot odor product called?
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Paul Tran | it's called the foot duster | |
Moiz Ali | It's called the **Foot Duster**.
You guys have a really cheeky sense of humor. You know, when people go on to Manscaped or look at Manscaped's past, I've read some of your taglines. They're fantastic! One I remember because I was reading it says, "When you trim the hedges, the tree stands taller." Who came up with that?
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Paul Tran | I mean I mean that's true right | |
Moiz Ali | that's absolutely true who came up with that tagline | |
Paul Tran | We have a really talented marketing team. I can't remember exactly where that tagline came from, but we just have a really talented marketing team that comes up with these catchy sayings all the time.
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Moiz Ali | Yeah, that's certainly really catchy. You know, one of the questions I was thinking about when I was doing some research about Manscaped is: how often are men trimming their hedges? Do you guys have any idea? Do you survey your customers about that kind of information or what?
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Paul Tran | It like we do survey our customers and it's actually, it turned out to be much more frequent than we thought. A lot of men, or you know, of course in anything, there's a bell curve, right? Where the bell curve, the highest frequency is around once a week to once every 14 days. So it's between, you know, 7 and 14 days is when somebody maintains their bush.
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Moiz Ali | and what's what's the other end of the bell curve is the other end once every like 5 years | |
Paul Tran | The other end, of course, is that it also follows the age gap. When you're much older, you're less incentivized to do it. So it's like, never right? So that's the other side of the bell curve.
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Moiz Ali | Gotcha. Yeah, and that look... I guess, who are the people buying these products? Is it men who are like, "Hey, I want to make myself look better and my tree to stand taller"? Or is it women who are like, "I'm tired of looking at my husband, boyfriend, or partner looking like this, and he needs to trim"?
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Paul Tran | Well, see, we actually have a pretty eclectic mix between men and women during the holidays. We open marketing much more to women, so we have more women customers than, you know, the rest of the year.
But really, the truth is that if you haven't groomed down there, you don't know what it feels like. After you've groomed, it feels refreshing. We've seen that men actually start to really enjoy it.
It's like when your hair is really long, and then you finally cut it. It feels really relaxing and cool. I think men are starting to enjoy that. It feels fresher; it's not as damp. So, I think they start getting used to that feeling, and it becomes just a normal thing. | |
Moiz Ali | Yeah, you're right about a lot of that. I know that when I shave, or at least get a barber to cut my beard, afterwards I just feel like I'm a new human being and feel great. I don't know what it is about that. I still don't understand what psychological impact that has, where I'm like, "Okay, this guy has just cut my beard, it looks good," but now I feel like I'm a newly reborn person. | |
Paul Tran | Yeah, it’s... it’s... it’s... and that’s what we strive for. You know, I mean, as the essence of the company, at the end of the day, we just want you to feel better.
The way we think about it is that life is pretty rough already. There’s so much to do and so many responsibilities. We just want to make your life a little more enjoyable.
And that’s truly, at the end of the day, that’s our mission.
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Moiz Ali | Yeah, and so there's a subscription element to the business as well. Aside from that, I imagine the hero product that you guys have is the lawnmower. It trims hedges, is that right? | |
Paul Tran | Absolutely. So, I mean, if you think about it, the way I like to explain it is that when you look at the female body, you realize that from head to toe, you're analyzing. You realize that there's a product and a brand for every single female care and need that you can think of.
When you switch your attention to the male body, you start with the head. You've got all your brands like Gillette, Dollar Shave Club, and Harry's. Then you go down to the torso, where you have Native and Old Spice. However, when you get down to the groin, there's nobody playing in that space. That is total empty white space.
We got lucky and fortunate; we recognized that three years ago and were able to capitalize on it. We attained an amazing name: Manscaped. Right now, we define the category of manscaping. Manscaped defines that category, and we totally own it.
What's really important for us is to create the best products. The way we think about our mission and our mandate is that we don't optimize for anything other than quality. We're not optimizing for price; we're not the cheapest products. We are the best products.
That's kind of how it is. There are just a lot of products out there, from everything low-end to high-end, but what we want to focus on is creating the absolute best products, and that starts...
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Moiz Ali | With the lawnmower... So, talking about the lawnmower, which is like a trimmer for your pubes, really. It's a fantastic name! I would love to delve more into the name of Manscaped and the lawnmower in a minute.
But, you know, you're on the lawnmower 3.0. How did you guys decide what went from lawnmower 2.0 to 3.0? And what are you going to put in lawnmower 4.0? Is there customer feedback involved in that? What's going on for you guys to make those types of decisions?
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Paul Tran | Absolutely! So, we have a Facebook group, and I'm going to plug it here. It's a Facebook Ballers group, and it's a VIP group. It's invite-only, so you have to ask to join.
This group is for our closest, best customers who are interactive with us. When I say "best," it's not based on monetary value or how much you buy. It's just about people who like the brand and want to interact with myself, our executive team, and our product development team.
We have, I think, close to 2,000 or 3,000 people in there who are really interactive. They love to test products, so we have a great core group of Manscaped fans.
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Moiz Ali | that we | |
Paul Tran | Can test new products, but one of the biggest things that we do is, you know, our blade has what we call **SkinSafe technology**. SkinSafe makes it really difficult for you to—excuse my French—nick your balls, right? Because if you've ever nicked yourself down there, it is the most horrible feeling, you know, that area.
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Moiz Ali | of the world I think that's what everyone is afraid of before they start manscaping is like | |
Paul Tran | what happens if I mess | |
Moiz Ali | this up yeah | |
Paul Tran | that is the number one fear and I can tell you it bleeds a lot you know it stands in the tracks it hurts it hurts all day you know so it's a real pain. So our blades we it's the only blade out there specifically engineered to trim your groin because it's not it's not like any other area of your face right like in some of your beard it's pretty taut your face is really taut it's really easy to trim right this is blue skin with hair on it so it's not the same experience as as trimming as trimming your beard it's much more difficult so go back to your to your to your question now how do we determine the difference between the 2.0 and the 3.0 it's just innovating you know in the product pipeline you're it might take like a year to 18 months to engineer and a great product so we have multiple products lined up that we're designing the 4.0 at the same time we're designing the 5.0 and we're putting thought into the 6.0 because we're we're a hardware company in addition to soft goods right so we have our own r and d lab that we that we built out that does all the soft goods and all the formulations you know the ball deodorant and everything else that we're gonna get into but on on a hardware side we have our own in house industrial designers material experts and and engineers that design these and and design and think through the problems that you have so when we when we developed the 2.0 that was really our first mass product with skinsafe and then the 3.0 was an evolution of the of the 2.0 you know it had a light in there because we realized like even if your bathroom is really lit you know there are shadows you know so like the light it seems like oh we thought about it is it is it a gimmick you know if we put a light put light on there would it be deemed as a gimmick and then we actually put a light on a prototype like oh this is actually really useful because like you you could because you need to see down there you know like it's not it's not the same it's not the same experience because you you know you you gotta see down there so putting a light on there was made it into the 3. | |
Paul Tran | O the port 4.0 I I don't wanna talk about all the different features but | |
Moiz Ali | yeah | |
Paul Tran | It's got... we're really innovating on this experience. We don't think that there are many companies that have really looked at groin trimming and how to innovate in that area while making it safe, easy, and enjoyable.
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Moiz Ali | And so, going back to this Facebook group, are you going to reach out to the Facebook group and say, "Hey guys, we have the 4.0. Does anyone want to try a couple of samples and give us your feedback before we finalize this production?" Is that how it works? Or like...
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Paul Tran | You know, before you launch the 4.0, that works all the time. So that cycle is much more frequent with our soft goods products.
All of our products, you know, like ball deodorant and all the products that we're testing in the pipeline now, go out and get tested internally. They undergo all the stability testing, and all of the employees use them. Then, we expand it out to our VIP Volus group.
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Moiz Ali | And then, talk to me a little bit about R&D. It's really amazing that you could sort of have that R&D in-house as an independent company. We never had that as a native independent company. Even once we joined Procter and Gamble, we did some R&D internally, but most of the R&D we did was with third-party manufacturers.
How big is this R&D group? I haven't heard of a startup thinking about R&D early on, or within the first five years of their existence, like you guys are doing. How big is that R&D group?
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Paul Tran | So, that goes back to a firm belief of mine. I've always thought it was really important not only to go wide but also to go deep.
What that means is you have to know a lot of different things, but you just can't be a... what was the saying? You know, "a jack of all trades but master of none," right? I don't think an entrepreneur can be like that. To be really successful, you not only have to go wide, but you also have to go deep. You have to be a master of a lot of things.
With that belief, we always made sure that everything was done in-house. We never hired an agency, and we don't use any agencies for anything. All video production is done in-house, all media buying is done in-house, and R&D is done in-house. I've got a...
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Moiz Ali | A lot of content, so no agencies.
Look, the technology that you guys build out, you have your own developers. When you launch a TV commercial, you have your own in-house production agency to make it. You have your own in-house creative agency to decide what it is, and then your own in-house employees.
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Paul Tran | to buy it | |
Moiz Ali | cut it up as well and edit yep that's insane how big is the entire team then | |
Paul Tran | right now we're seeing about 72 employees so we're not that big | |
Moiz Ali | Okay, yeah, that is not that big and pretty amazing based on the amount of content that I see coming out of Manscaped. So you guys are certainly productive at creating content. When did you guys hire your first R&D employee then?
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Paul Tran | Well, I mean, just like many other startups in the CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) space, we use contract manufacturers. We utilized a third-party lab to create our first products.
However, about 14 months ago, we started really building out our own R&D lab. We hired our first R&D research chemist because we knew that we had to retain this knowledge and really understand it from top to bottom.
Having it in-house allows us to iterate very quickly. If we don't like something, we can change it immediately. What would take weeks when working with a lab—because we've worked with labs before—you have to send them a brief, they send you samples, and then you send them back and forth. The cycles are just way too long.
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Moiz Ali | yeah | |
Paul Tran | So for us, having a team that we can work with hand in hand has really accelerated that.
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Moiz Ali | Gotcha! Okay, let's start talking a little bit more about the early days of Manscaped.
So, before this R&D team existed, before you guys were developing the Lawn Mower 4.0, you know, you were working on the original products. Manscaped gets on *Shark Tank* at some point.
Mhmm. And at some... like, you know, you're on *Shark Tank*, you're working on the original marketing for the company. Do you guys call the first product you released the Lawn Mower 1.0?
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Paul Tran | it was called the lawnmower yeah | |
Moiz Ali | it was called the lawnmower okay gotcha | |
Paul Tran | yeah | |
Moiz Ali | And like, how do you guys... yeah, tell me a little bit more about how this marketing strategy developed? Because certainly, I think everyone is familiar with the Dollar Shave Club commercial or the initial video that really launched that brand and how spectacularly successful it was.
You know, how Michael Dubin said, "You don't need Roger Federer to endorse your razor blade. Why are you paying Roger Federer to shave?"
How did you guys get started in terms of your marketing strategy?
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Paul Tran | So, you know, we first started to be aware that this is something that is good for men. It helped with being hygienic and maintaining cleanliness, right?
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Moiz Ali | yeah | |
Paul Tran | So, we started off with messaging in that way: "Dudes, you guys should do this because, you know, it's good for you. You'll feel better."
None of that resonated, right?
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Moiz Ali | how long did you try that type of marketing for that was like more serious and less cheeky | |
Paul Tran | probably for 3 months okay | |
Moiz Ali | And how much money did you have to spend in those 3 months to be like, "This isn't working out"? You had to ballpark it. What is it, $10,000 or $100,000?
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Paul Tran | No, I think we spent probably **$50,000** on marketing, only to realize that it didn't work.
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Moiz Ali | and then yeah so so then tell me about the evolution then what happened | |
Paul Tran | Yeah, so then, you know, being scientific, it just didn't gravitate to anyone. So then we basically changed gears and said, you know, we knew that there was a market for this and there was white space. We knew that we had to crack it and figure out how to communicate with men.
In my past, I've had startups that focused primarily on women in skincare, right? And perfumes and colognes, and even in other things. But we needed to understand that we had to get to that tipping point of understanding how to communicate with men in this way.
We realized that, you know, dudes aren't talking about this. They don't stand around the water cooler and say, "Hey, your hair looks so great today! What do you use? Is it a volumizer? What kind of conditioner are you using?" Dudes don't do that, right?
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Moiz Ali | yeah | |
Paul Tran | They don't talk about skincare. They don't talk about deodorants or hygiene, right? But they'll talk about funny things—things that are hilarious and entertain them.
So then we started creating our first video. I remember it was a video because it was towards the end of the year. We had produced this video of Santa Claus trimming. It was set in an apartment, and Ryan Fiore, our VP of Marketing, was the one who actually dressed up as Santa.
He's got his Santa pants down around his ankles, and the camera is just panning. It looks like snow is falling down, right? As you pan out, you see Santa's legs, and as it's snowing, you hear this buzzing sound. So you're seeing, like, "Oh, it's kind of snowing indoors," because it was inside a house.
Then we had another person, Katherine, who was sprinkling these fake white hairs onto the ground. We were pulling back the camera, panning back and panning out, and you can see Santa's legs. That was kind of the first video that we shot. That was the first.
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Moiz Ali | Was that the first move you had towards a cheeky sense of humor? From being serious about, "Hey, this is good for you. It's going to make you..." | |
Paul Tran | feel better yeah that was that was the first one | |
Moiz Ali | Okay, let me talk a little bit more about the $50,000 you spent. Where did you end up spending that $50,000 over those three months to test and see if this concept has any legs?
Because, you know, you have a product that consumers want. You're trying to find the right marketing channels and the right marketing messaging to go out with that. That marketing messaging is what's failing. Where did you spend that $50,000?
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Paul Tran | Look, I think this answer is going to be kind of a de facto answer across many startups, especially in the early days. You spend it on Facebook, you spend it on Google, and that is just the reality. | |
Moiz Ali | but what | |
Paul Tran | I'm what I do want to say about that is, like, all you entrepreneurs out there, don't get a false sense of confidence that your cap is so low and that you're doing so well on Facebook. This is not going to scale infinitely, you know? Because you start running those numbers, right? You're like on Facebook, like, "Oh man, my cap is $20." If I dump, you know, $200,000,000 into marketing, wouldn't it make...? | |
Moiz Ali | this much | |
Paul Tran | Yes, there is a Facebook. It doesn't work that way. There is a Facebook and a Google wall, and I'll use it to a different Facebook ceiling. You're gonna hit that ceiling, and it's gonna hurt. A lot of entrepreneurs need to realize that early on.
We were really fortunate that we realized that early on because you gotta think about it. Facebook is really, really good at targeting. I mean, Facebook and Google, these guys are data powerhouses. They know how to target and find the right buyers for you. But if your market, if your total addressable market is this big...
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Moiz Ali | yeah | |
Paul Tran | Right, you're going to hit that ceiling pretty quickly. You have to really think about how to broaden your product appeal and make sure that you are addressing a very large total addressable market. Eventually, you're going to have to market to men, women, or both. If you're still doing fine-tune targeting, looking for niche markets, and trying to extract every value, that's something you can't scale. | |
Moiz Ali | I think that, look, what you said definitely has a ton of truth. It is absolutely correct.
At Native, you know, we saw a $2 Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) in 2015, a $4 CAC in 2016, and a $6.50 CAC in 2017. So, even looking at that $2 CAC, it basically more than tripled over the course of two years.
We saw multiple ceilings. There was a ceiling at $200,000, another at $500,000, and a much denser ceiling at $1,000,000. Trying to push against those ceilings took a lot of time, effort, and the right messaging.
You're absolutely right from an audience targeting perspective as well. Lookalike audiences absolutely crushed it for us for a really long time until we hit one of those ceilings. We used a lookalike audience of 1%, which looked like about 2,000,000 people. Then, as you start expanding that to 2% and 3%, all of a sudden, lookalikes don't work anymore.
At some point, you're just like, "I'm targeting all women," and then you're like, "I'm targeting all humans that exist on Earth now."
In reality, not everyone is going to buy something when they see a Facebook ad. Facebook does a great job of segmenting their audiences. Let's say there are 300,000,000 people in the United States; something like 80% of the people on Facebook generally won't click ads and make a purchase from them.
So, everybody is competing for that 20% of people who do buy things online. Even if your total addressable market is this big, in reality, online it's this small because there are just fewer people buying things online.
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Paul Tran | Absolutely! If you want to build a truly scalable business, you eventually have to figure out how to get off of platforms. Online should always be a part of your marketing mix and strategy, but it should never be 100%.
As soon as you can, you're going to go through withdrawal symptoms from getting off platforms because you're going to start diversifying your marketing. Otherwise, it's just never going to scale.
For us, we're everywhere now. We have figured out how to do this, and we are very fortunate to have a really talented marketing team. We got off of Facebook and Google probably last year. When I say "off," I mean we've really diversified from it.
One of our big channels is still YouTube, as a lot of people spend their time there. We're one of the biggest spenders on Hulu, and we have a massive TV budget. We also sponsor the UFC. In fact, we haven't really announced it yet, but we're going to be one of the exclusive sponsors of the San Francisco 49ers. You know, so... wow!
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Moiz Ali | what does that mean if you're an exclusive sponsor for the 49ers what does that mean | |
Paul Tran | That means that I think that next year, when you go to Levi's Stadium and you go into any of the bathrooms, you're going to see our signage on top of all the urinals.
Wow, that's going to be... I mean, the great thing is, that's what we craft, right? It's like, how many companies out there can actually buy that ad unit? Like, who's going to buy that ad unit? Apple’s not going to buy an ad unit on an Apple urinal, right? But it fits so well for us, and it fits our cheeky tone, so it works for us.
So, like, what are you doing right there? You're thinking about it, right? So, you know, when you see an ad that has a finger down with the Trevor and says, "Got bush," you're like, you know, you're standing right there, you can kind of evaluate and think about that.
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Moiz Ali | Okay, I want to talk much more about this. I want to discuss a little bit about the past as well. But before we get off this topic, how much, ballpark, would the cost be for a San Francisco 49ers sponsorship? Is it 6 figures, 7 figures, or 5 figures? | |
Paul Tran | oh it's definitely not 5 figures | |
Moiz Ali | Yeah, I know it's... I can't imagine it's five figures. So, give me a ballpark.
Let me give you a couple of examples. We interviewed Kara from Hint Water a couple of weeks ago, and she told me how she bought a Super Bowl commercial for under $1,000,000. We also interviewed Andrew, who's the CEO of a company called Hims, which is a men's sexual wellness company. He bought urinals over Giant Stadium.
Give me an idea of what the cost is. Just ballpark it for me. You don't need to give me the exact number. Is it high six figures, low six figures, mid six figures, or is it seven figures?
At Native, we were running a very lean budget, but by the time we were doing over $100,000,000, we had a pretty sizable marketing budget. We were spending money on TV ads and billboards in New York City. We were going to spend $1,000,000 in 2020, or we were going to before COVID really hit, on subway ads in New York City.
That included station takeovers, which cost a very low six figures, and some photos on subway trains, which cost about $40,000.
What does a 49ers exclusive sponsorship get you? Are you going to do that? Do you have a booth? Are you going to go to games? Give me the price or give me a ballpark.
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Paul Tran | Of the price, I would say it's in the **six figures**. Not to the **seven figures** yet, but definitely in the **six figures**. | |
Moiz Ali | okay and does it include a bunch of tickets or am I gonna see you at a bunch of 49ers games | |
Paul Tran |
Yeah, I mean, the 49ers are just a phenomenal team management-wise. They're so awesome. We got to go to the Super Bowl with them. We were at the NFC playoffs in their box. It was an amazing experience.
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Moiz Ali | Okay, let's go... let's rewind a little bit and go back to the Santa Claus commercial.
So, you guys have, you know, it's been 3 months. The seriousness wasn't working. You were spending on Facebook and Google, burned $50,000, didn't love what happened.
You've sort of pivoted now; you're running the Santa Claus commercial. Or, like, you've got the Santa Claus video. What do you do with it? You're like, you know, it's really funny, it's cheeky, it's super interesting, but it's time relevant because it's winter.
Nobody's ever heard of Santa Claus trimming his pubes, but that's really funny. What happens? What do you do with that commercial? And when do you realize that cheeky sense of humor makes sense?
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Paul Tran | so I would I would answer that in in 2 parts so the the the first the first part is you once again you run it on facebook and Google right that's that's the first thing so you so you you run it on you you run it on on on facebook you run it on youtube and what you're what you're tracking for at that time is like how am I how much am I paying per cpm and per click right like what am I what am I what does it cost when they deliver traffic to the website yeah right and then and then when when they get to the website then you then now you're you're you know you you have to make sure that you're really observant and performing a lot of convergent optimization right you gotta make sure that your your that lead closes when they get to the site right you present them with the right offer so the first part of me answering your question is you know we got that video we're testing we're running it on on facebook we're running it on youtube and and we're we're tracking how much it's costing us and remember at that time we weren't broad yet we're still like okay we're gonna we're gonna advertise to men that's 18 to you know 25 it's gonna run this video with this call to action and then there's you know we're running 35 to 40 with this video or this different call to action and then it's all gonna drive to the website so then you know then of course you're calculating oh wait what what are my cpms what are my cpas and and more importantly my my cpcs and then and then when they get to the site that's when you really start doing a lot of work with like offer testing like what what do I need to offer what do I need to say because early days really really early days what you what you're looking for is what you're looking for is are signals right and you have to be really in tune with your entire marketing strategy to understand these signals right and what what I mean by signals is early on I set up 3 3 pillars of what what is important to our male audience and this is very early on right it it it was you know when when you trim the bush the the tree stands taller right that was that was an important motivation factor for them | |
Moiz Ali | yeah | |
Paul Tran | right use the right tools for the job right so if you're gonna if you're gonna do this don't hurt yourself because yeah like like that that was a really important marketing message that really got them that that really got me to understand it so we could we distilled down you know this really big concept of don't hey guys don't cut yourself because that's crude to say right so it it it really just became it you know use the right tools for the job right so when you trim the hedges the tree stands taller it tells you okay well then that that works right that you you kinda equate and you kinda understand that there's a there's a benefit right outside of you just feeling good because for us we we knew that ultimately we want it to be a much bigger brand that encompasses you know masculinity and empowerment for men we didn't want to just be a growing a growing business right that was that was never the that was never our intention we wanted to empower men but to get there we had to figure out what what what we what men were receptive to right so that's where that you know if you trim the bushes the true stands taller men got that right away right they got they they got why they should do that and how they would and you know receive this power this this not this power they receive this feeling of empowerment right and then after that it was it was all about use the right tools for the job because don't don't cut yourself don't hurt yourself but that was that was the that was the big learning that that cost probably 200,000 quarter of a 1000000 to really learn and it's it's really kind of philosophical when you talk about marketing in in this way you know but like to spend that much money just to learn these two key things and most people like a lot of people like they are not marketers they're not they're not they're not really in tune with with their audience that might just pass them you know like then they'll both think oh okay didn't really get that but we tested a lot of marketing message and realized that that those two things combined together really resonated really got meant to understand why you should do this the need and why you should use dedicated tools that we created to solve this problem so I think any any start up any any startup trying to build a brand and not just like a saas platform where you're just selling utility right your saas platform you're selling utility this you know we solve your problem like this right but but to to really build a brand in a cpg a highly competitive cpg space you have to distill your marketing message to be so fine tuned that that it really resonates with a broad audience | |
Moiz Ali | So, you tested. Can you give me the examples of... so the two that worked were, you know, "Tree stands taller" and "Use the right tools for the job." What were some of the marketing messages you thought might work but ended up not working? Do you remember any of those?
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Paul Tran | Oh God, I can't remember those. There were so many. We had a bunch that made it to the shortlist. I think it was like 10. One of them was something like "Fuel Fresher" or something like that, right?
It was one of them. You know, "Make sure you're clean and ready all the time." There were a bunch of different ideas along that vein, but it just didn't resonate. It just didn't click with the guys.
And that's what you're searching for as marketers. When trying to market any product, you're searching for the way to sell your product in one simple statement that your audience understands and sees the need for instantly.
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Moiz Ali | Yeah, so you spend $200,000 sort of testing that messaging on Facebook and Google.
I really liked what you said earlier, which was once you get people to your website, you have to optimize offers as well. I feel like too often people are like, "Great, what is my CPA?" and my CPA is, "How good is my Facebook ad?"
What they don't look at is, "How good is my landing page? Am I convincing people, once they get to my landing page, that they should buy this product, that it's a good value, and that they should buy it now and not two weeks from now?"
I feel like those are two sides of the same coin, and both are going to dramatically impact CPA.
Right? You can say, "Hey, tree stands taller" on your Facebook ad, and like, you know, the flip side of that coin, the landing page can be, "Use the right tools for the job." But if a landing page is like, "Buy this trimmer because your balls aren't the same as your face," it could be a very different type of CPA.
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Paul Tran | Yeah, I think a lot of entrepreneurs... and that's where I go back to. You know, it's difficult to hire an agency unless you've got a lot of money, right? Unless you're venture funded. We weren't at that time.
So, unless we had a lot of money, we wouldn't be able to buy enough time from an agency to actually come up with these things.
If you're an entrepreneur and you think you have a really phenomenal product—something you've spent years building—I would say take that leap. Don't be shy.
In my core, like half of my career, I was a technologist. I didn't do CPG; I wasn't a branding guy or a marketer. I was a technologist. I built SaaS platforms and software.
So, I would say don't be shy. Take that risk and do the marketing yourself because you're the only one that really understands the value of your product. Trying to communicate that with an agency... it's really hit or miss unless you've got a lot of money and you're paying for a lot of their time. I've seen it not work out very well.
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Moiz Ali | Couldn't agree more. When we were growing Native, the entire time we were an independent company, I ran all paid ads. After we sold the business, I still ran paid ads until probably like 6 months ago or something to that effect, or maybe 8 months ago at this point.
I was just like, "This is the backbone of the business. This is how we're growing. This is one of the reasons we're growing very quickly." I didn't want to outsource that to somebody else who, by necessity, is an agency. By definition, there will be agency costs as a result of that. They won't care as much; they don't care about the business. They won't be looking at the metrics as quickly or as frequently as I am, and they won't be iterating on different tests on messages.
If this is a skill that I have, if this is a skill that's important to the company, I should get good at this skill or at least understand it.
One of the things you mentioned was that you need a lot of money in order to hire these agencies to get them to do good work. Going back to what you guys did, you spent $50,000, and it didn't really work out with the serious messaging. Then you spent $200,000 and realized what messaging did work. How were you able to afford this stuff? Because early on, you were bootstrapped.
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Paul Tran | Yeah, I mean, we were bootstrapped for... and we grew organically for a very, very long time.
With prior successes, you know, you gotta gamble and reinvest. I think that's the best way to talk about it. Fundraising and spending investor dollars has its price; there is a cost to that, right?
I think very often that gets overshadowed by the glitz and glamour of fundraising and closing a round. That's where I would advise entrepreneurs. You know, closing a round—because right now when you read the news, everyone closes a round and then everyone's cheering. There's a lot of PR around it.
It's like, "Dude, that's just the beginning!" You don't know how much those investors are going to be on your case all the time about how to spend that money. Then you get into a situation where you're starting to spend frivolously.
I guarantee you, if we had $1,000,000 in the bank, we wouldn't have spent $200,000. We would have spent half a million testing.
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Moiz Ali | yeah | |
Paul Tran | Right, so I think it's a cynical trap to raise money way too early. Because, number one, that's when you lose the most amount of your company, right? It's early on. | |
Moiz Ali | most dilution | |
Paul Tran | Yeah, the most amount of dilution... you look back and you're like, "Oh my God, that was crazy," right? But then, it makes you not as strict with yourself and with your budget. | |
Moiz Ali | Absolutely, I couldn't agree more with all that. You know, we raised like $50,000, and it was a great sign that we were onto a successful business. We raised that at a $5,000,000 valuation probably four months into the business. Then, another $250,000 maybe within the first year.
The reason I did that early on was that the business was working. In reality, we didn't even need that $250,000. I just wanted to make sure that there was external validation that what I was doing here was right. I think that was the primary reason.
The secondary reason was that I was like, "I'm in San Francisco, and this is what everyone here does. Everyone raises money as a sign of success." There's this great tweet I saw—I don't remember who tweeted it—but someone said, "Raise $10,000,000 and you get invited to every party in San Francisco. Sell your business and make $10,000,000? Crickets."
Somehow, people celebrate the fundraising more than they do actual successful exits, which doesn't make any sense.
What scale were you at when you did raise your first few checks? And, you know, I want to make sure there's some disclosure here: I was one of those checks at some point.
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Moiz Ali | What scale were you at when you raised those first few checks | |
Paul Tran | Well, those first few checks... I mean, we were beyond the 8 figures, right? By the time we raised those first few checks, they were... when?
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Moiz Ali | you say you were beyond 8 figures you mean you were like north of $10,000,000 not north of a $100,000,000 | |
Paul Tran | Correct. Okay, correct. Yeah, and those few checks, the impetus behind those was to bring on talent like yourself, right? I mean, we called it a "sweetheart round" or "sweetheart note" because we wanted to bring on amazing talent.
There weren't any VCs in that note; it was everyone that was pretty much hand-selected from a group of friends. You know, like yourself, like Nick from Thryv, and other amazing individuals that can really contribute to the business. They have the experience, and we wanted to actually call and talk to you.
You know, like, I'll call you when you're in China, and we'll talk about things. So, that was the reason why we raised, and it wasn't because of need. | |
Moiz Ali | And has that been helpful? You know, we raised money. We raised $500,000 at Native. About half the investors, I would say, were really helpful. They were people that I could call and say, "Hey, this is a problem I'm having. Have you had it before?"
You know, Nick was the first episode of this podcast. He actually helped me with a bunch of trademark stuff, or at least made me think about trademark issues early on. One of our investors was an executive at Facebook who was really helpful in getting us access to the right people at Facebook that we needed.
Another investor was just like a calming voice. He was a VC and had seen a bunch of things happen in San Francisco. So when I called him up, his name's Paul Farris from Azure, he said, "Hey Moiz, this is how to think about things. You're panicking too much."
Have the investors that you let in, those sweethearts, been helpful?
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Paul Tran | I was, yeah, absolutely. I think you nailed it on the head with about 50%. It's like, even when you hand-select these guys, this group of investors, everyone has their own lives, right? Everyone has their own focus.
So, of everyone you hand-select, only 50% will be really valuable. Imagine if you don't hand-select them and it's just a group of a bunch of different people. The value out of that will be dramatically lower, right?
So, yeah, 50%. I can call anytime, and I want to say there's gotta be a management of expectations. Everyone's got their own lives, everyone's got their own jobs. Just because they invest in your company doesn't mean they have 10 hours a week of their time, right?
You gotta manage expectations. It's really key decisions. "Hey, I'm going through this, what do you think?" You know, we don't need manufacturers in here or whatever. It's like, send out a broad email and, you know, "Hey, anybody can help me with connecting with this person or that person?" That's where you can get really rapid responses, and they can be really helpful.
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Moiz Ali | Yeah, okay, let's do a little bit of fast forwarding. You've raised this money from a bunch of sweethearts, including myself. You've spent $200,000 to $250,000 on Facebook and Google with the Santa Claus commercial.
You're like, "Okay, okay, I'm not gonna talk about anything. I'm gonna be less serious and be more cheeky with my humor because that's what's resonating with consumers."
At what point do you start getting off Facebook and Google?
Look, I think one of the most impressive things I found about Manscaped is the diversity of channel acquisition. YouTube is a really hard channel for people to scale.
So, like, you know, Hulu... we've tried on Hulu. Native has been on Hulu, but ads weren't nearly as successful as you guys.
How do you guys test?
Well, first, help me understand your largest channels of customer acquisition. Is it YouTube? Is it still Facebook? What is the largest channel still?
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Paul Tran | Well, it depends. I mean, Facebook and Google are still very large channels. Between YouTube, Google, and Facebook, it's a large channel, right? Because Facebook encompasses both of their assets.
It's Facebook and Instagram, which is a very, very large channel. You can't forget about Instagram. Everyone talks about Facebook, but Instagram is a huge channel. That's where a lot of spend goes.
You know, the other spend is on Google, of course. There's AdWords, there is GDN, and there are so many different ad units that most startup entrepreneurs haven't even considered on the Google platform.
Then there's YouTube, which drives a tremendous amount of views—not necessarily traffic. Okay? Because there's so much inventory on YouTube, it's just so hard to crack. YouTube is so hard to crack. | |
Moiz Ali | Okay, let me ask you in a different way. If you had to choose, if all of these channels were going to be regulated by the FTC and all of them were going to be shut down except one, which one would you want to continue to exist?
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Paul Tran | it depends on when it depends on when right now I would say Google | |
Moiz Ali | today yeah you'd say what | |
Paul Tran | today's call | |
Moiz Ali | you'd say which | |
Paul Tran | today would be Google okay | |
Moiz Ali | And then help me understand a little bit more about YouTube. Are you guys doing pre-roll ads, or are you doing influencer-based ads on YouTube?
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Paul Tran | We're doing pre-roll ads, influencer ads, and user-generated content. We have a team of five in our influencer department, and all they do is work with influencers.
It gets to a point where you have to keep grinding, and there's a tipping point where everything starts to gel because all of these channels lift everything. You can't just be on Facebook and be successful; you have to be on Facebook, Google, Hulu, and everything else to actually scale massively.
We realized that very early on, so this year is a big push for us to be everywhere, including billboards. We have about 20 billboards out there now, urinal ads, and we were even featured at UFC fights. We had a car in NASCAR, and we were on the Conor McGregor fight. So, wow, yeah!
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Moiz Ali | So, tell me how you structure your team to handle all that. Do you guys have one person that's working on YouTube also working on Instagram? Or is there somebody who's dedicated to YouTube, somebody who's dedicated to UFC fights, and somebody who's dedicated to NASCAR?
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Paul Tran | So, there is an out-of-home director, Joey Kovach. He's phenomenal, and I think the way that... to answer your first question about structure, you have to find the best people. The best people will bring in the best people.
It's so important as an entrepreneur to build the right team. One of your primary jobs as a CEO is to lead the vision and build the team. Bringing in the right generals, the right key people, and the leadership team will automatically start to bring in the right people on the next layer.
Ryan and I have been working together for almost a decade now. Ryan is our VP of Marketing, and he brought in Joey Kovach, who did a lot of the marketing for MVMT before they exited from the ground up. Then, he brought in Nate Singer to handle Google and YouTube.
We also brought in Natalie Hoffman to handle radio. She was phenomenal; she got us on Howard Stern and all these amazing podcasts. Then, they brought in Lauren on the marketing side, and Lauren built out the influencer team.
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Moiz Ali | So, it sounds like you have directors for each channel, though. As opposed to, like, you know, you have a YouTube manager, somebody who manages YouTube, somebody who manages out of home, and somebody who manages Instagram and Facebook. That's sort of how you structured it under a VP of Marketing, correct? And then how is it structured?
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Paul Tran | For a startup, though, I don't want you to think that that's what you need to start. You don't need that to begin. You gotta do everything on your phone, right?
In the beginning, Ryan and I were on YouTube every single day, clicking through and refreshing like a thousand times a day to see metrics. That's how you start.
Then, when you reach critical mass, that's when you bring in someone to handle it. When you go on and pioneer the next channel.
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Moiz Ali | Yeah, I think that's a great thing to mention. I feel like a lot of people want to be in seven different marketing channels when they launch their business, and it's hard to be an expert.
You know, I've rarely met people who are good at both Facebook and Google Ads. Yet, people are like, "Yeah, I'm going to try and run Facebook, Google, Snap, Pinterest, and TikTok ads when I launch my business." I'm like, you're not going to be able to measure anything.
Look, you're going to forget everything that you've ever done by the time you're looking at TikTok ads, which is your fifth channel. Today, you're going to forget what your Facebook ads looked like.
So, it's really hard to be a master of so many channels right out of the gate. I'm a big fan of going deep on one or two channels, or three if you're able to, and becoming a master of those. Then, hire people once you understand the metrics behind those and you've built some sort of critical mass. You need to know how to understand the next three to four months of the trajectory of that channel.
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Paul Tran | mhmm you gotta master it you gotta master it | |
Moiz Ali | Before you move on, yeah, absolutely. How do you think about budgets when you're doing this?
Is there like a quarterly meeting for budgets or an annual meeting for budgets where you're like, "Okay, influencer team, you get 12% of our budget; radio team, you get 10% of our budget."
How do you guys think? Or are you like, "You know what? Influencers, we're willing to spend up to $30 CAC. Spend as much as you can until you hit $30."
How do you think about that?
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Paul Tran | I mean, now we are... to be honest, we are much more systematic now. We're much more organized.
But the first two years, let's be honest, nobody sets budgets. In the first two years, you're still learning so much. You're still growing so much, and it's still so fluid.
Like, you know, dude, we just launched this channel with this video. The CPA is still... well, kind of go balls out, right? And then, yeah.
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Moiz Ali | And that's the only thing that matters over the course of the next 8 weeks: this channel. Everyone else, be quiet. This is the channel that's going to make our business now.
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Paul Tran | yep | |
Moiz Ali | yeah that's | |
Paul Tran | Really fun! And so, you know, I don't want to... I want to make sure that the listeners and the entrepreneurs out there don't think that you need to have budgets in place. In the early days, you just gotta make it work. That's all you gotta do. You gotta make it work; that's all you gotta focus on. | |
Moiz Ali | Yeah, in the early days, it's always audibles, right? Every day is a new fire that you have to put out. On the rare days where you don't have fires and can sort of focus on marketing channels, you have to go with just what's working and not dogma.
You can't be like, "You know what? Facebook worked for us," or "YouTube worked for Paul at Landscape, so I'm going to spend money on Paul." People come up to me and they're like, "Hey, Facebook worked for you guys. How should I get Facebook to work for me?"
And I'm like, "Look, Facebook worked for us, but what worked for us almost certainly will not work for you. We had a specific use case. We were on there at a different time than Facebook is today, and we were spending a lot of resources on Facebook."
For you guys, the content that you have, with the cheeky humor, is much more amenable to video than it may be to a quick mobile photo. So it's just a different channel that works. People cannot get caught up on the dogma of others. They have to call audibles when they get to the line, see what's working, and spend their time and resources there.
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Paul Tran | absolutely | |
Moiz Ali | What did you guys like fail at? So, like, you know, certainly it sounds... and maybe "fail" is a bad word. You know, at Native, we failed at a ton of stuff. Operations for a really long time until we hired a stellar operations person. Finance forever.
What did you guys feel like? Like, you know, it's certainly the... like not doing the cheeky marketing was tough. Did you guys have operational supply issues? Because these things can't be easy. It's not like you're, you know, with deodorant. You want to make more? You probably can do it in, like, you know, a week. You need a week of heads up, maybe two weeks.
These are, you know, hardware components that cannot be made in a day or two. It's not just mixing ingredients together. Well, I mean, some of your products are, but a lot of them aren't. You know, what were the things that you guys struggled with to make the business a success?
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Paul Tran | Absolutely right. So, I mean, I'll answer it in a kind of an all-encompassing way. If you're in software and SaaS, then you don't have to worry about, you know, making stuff right. You've got to worry about them having enough servers. But now, with clouds, we don't have to worry about that anymore either, right?
So that's why software can be so lucrative if you get the right win. But for hard and physical products and operations, supply chain, you know, it's a lot of work. So if you're going to ask me, I'm exactly with you. We failed at operations. We failed multiple times at operations. Meaning what?
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Moiz Ali | was one of the give me an example of a disaster you guys had | |
Paul Tran | disaster so or like | |
Moiz Ali | what are the things that you failed at in operations specifically | |
Paul Tran | Yeah, so we had a run rate. We had projected inventory for the entire first quarter. We bought it, we have it in stock. It was November, and we thought, "Well, we're good." We bought so much inventory that we believed we were set for the next quarter.
This was November, and we thought we were good until April. That's how much inventory we had. By December 16th, we sold out—sold out of all inventory. We were like, "Oh crap!" It was crazy. Everyone in our families was in the warehouse packing new inventory to send out.
That was definitely a failure. We shipped late to our customers, which means they weren't happy with us. That’s a fail for us because we want to delight our customers all the time. You know, that really sucked, and that didn’t go away, by the way. That happens all the time.
When you're scaling, you can never predict how things will go. Like Howard Stern would do a read, and things would just pop. Influencers would launch their videos, and things would just pop. It’s really difficult to manage all the channels because now we’re omnichannel.
We're not just a subscription service; we're not just a B2C company. We have Amazon, D2C, international, and retail. Now we're working with a lot of our retail partners. You're planning with them months in advance. Retail is a different beast; it's not D2C. You're planning a year in advance at all times. | |
Moiz Ali | Yeah, I think I didn't understand how hard it would be until Native got into retail. You know, we scaled and we had the same operational problems you did in terms of running out of inventory.
In 2015, we were making 500 units of deodorant a week. By 2017, we were making 21,000 units a day, and we were still selling out. If you bought your deodorant on a Thursday, it was either made the day before or the day after. It's not like we had a lot of inventory.
But once you sell into Target and Walmart and large brick-and-mortar stores, their first order could be 5, 30,000 units or 20, 50,000 units. All of a sudden, the just-in-time inventory that you had always been reliant on is no longer sustainable. | |
Paul Tran | Yeah, absolutely. It gets really difficult as your SKU starts to expand also.
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Moiz Ali | Yeah, so tell me about some of the retailers that you guys are in. You guys are in Target today. Any other retailers?
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Paul Tran | We're in Target and Best Buy, and we're really going to focus on Target and Best Buy because we feel that that's where our audience lives. You know, we have a lot of great retail partners, but for the time being, at least for 2020, we're really going to focus on Target and Best Buy.
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Moiz Ali | Does your online site make up the majority of your sales, or do Target and Best Buy make up the majority of your sales?
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Paul Tran | no d two c web ecommerce makes up up the majority of our sales | |
Moiz Ali | And is there like cyclicality to the business? You know, it's really interesting that you said by December 16th you had sort of sold out. I imagine that people are buying this product for Christmas. Is there another bump in sales, for instance, right before Valentine's Day?
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Paul Tran | Yeah, Valentine's Day, Father's Day, any gift-giving holiday, we see a bump. That's when women buy us gifts for men. And then, of course, holidays, right? That's when women really buy gifts for men.
But then, yeah, men are also spending on themselves. So, you know, Q4 is definitely huge. Just like any other e-commerce company, Q4 is huge for everybody. | |
Moiz Ali | Yeah, well, I mean, Q4 was actually probably one of the worst quarters for native. In part, this is because do you tend to wear more deodorant in the summer when it's hotter out as opposed to the winter when it's cold?
You know, some people give deodorant as gifts. In fact, a lot of people do, a lot more than I suspected. But, like, if I gave you deodorant as a gift, I think you'd be like, "Well, this is nice, but okay, this is like a pretty mediocre gift."
I mean, if I give you a package of Manscaped, it'd be a very different product. It's obviously a higher price and a much nicer gift.
I wonder if men ever accuse men who get this as a gift from their female partners. I wonder if they ever say, "This is a gift for yourself. When I buy lingerie for you, it's a gift for me. This is a gift for yourself." I wonder if...
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Paul Tran | You know, we haven't polled our customers, but that might be the case. We have a lot of unboxing experiences and people’s unboxing reactions on Instagram and TikTok. It's been pretty... | |
Moiz Ali | Fun! Did you work your way up when it came to influencer advertising? Did you start with micro-influencers and work your way up to, you know, A-list celebrities? Or were you like, "You know what, let's go big right out of the gate and get the Kim Kardashians or Tom Bradys of the world to try this product?" | |
Paul Tran | You know, we still haven't connected with celebrities. We have not tapped any celebrities yet, but we are talking about it.
We went with amazing influencers. Our first influencer that we ever brought on was Jose Zaviga, who teaches men's fashion. He's phenomenal! The dude knows his stuff. He really understands men's hygiene and grooming.
So, we tapped him as one of our first influencers, and we still work very closely with him to this day. | |
Moiz Ali | So, I guess, was your budget right away sort of saying, "Hey, let's put $10,000, $50,000, or $100,000 to test among different influencers to see what works and what doesn't"? Or would you prefer to go with an influencer that has 500,000 followers? They may not be an A-list celebrity, but it's certainly a large Instagram celebrity.
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Paul Tran | So, you know, I think if you're going to test influencer marketing, testing with micro-influencers will give you really bad data because there's just not enough reach.
You gotta test with enough reach to have... it's like you're sampling. The more data you have, the better the results. The better the data, the better you can conclude on your findings.
At that time, José had like 4,000,000 followers on YouTube, and that was the right amount for us to really do a good test. | |
Moiz Ali | Wow, alright. So, you're looking for guys who are already rather large on YouTube. But before you spend money there, is that still the case? Are you still sort of focusing on those people that have a million or more subscribers, or are you willing to go down now to people who have 10,000 or more subscribers?
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Paul Tran | Now, our influencer team evaluates each potential influencer partner. What we primarily evaluate for is **authenticity**. If you've got 30,000 followers or fans on each of these different platforms, and on your Instagram all you're doing is pushing products, then you're not the right influencer for us.
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Moiz Ali | yeah | |
Paul Tran | You know, we want you to actually test our product. We really want you to use it and be a fan of it, right? Because that authenticity comes out. We, as a brand, really value our authenticity. We want to have a really authentic voice, and that's really important to our brand. | |
Moiz Ali | And so, how do female influencers sort of project that authenticity? Is it by talking about, you know, their partners? Or how do female users project that authenticity?
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Paul Tran | Well, it depends. Usually, the way they do it depends on which platform, right?
On Instagram, we're just taking pictures of it as they're endorsing it. Many times, they're taking pictures with a partner, as you know, because Instagram is a very photo-based platform.
Whereas on YouTube, it's mostly couples. If it's a woman on Instagram, or a female Instagram account, they would pair up with their partner and talk about the product. There are so many ways you can discuss this product.
Men can talk about how great it is, how it doesn't hurt, how it's the right tool for the job, and how much better it makes them feel. When women talk about it, they might say, "Hey, you give this to your men, and it makes them feel much better. It makes you like it more."
So, we leave it up to them to kind of put their own spin on it.
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Moiz Ali | Gotcha, okay. You know, we're almost out of time, so I just want to ask a couple more questions.
The business has changed dramatically since you went from that serious advertising phase with you and Ryan sort of refreshing YouTube to today. Now, you're sponsoring NFL teams and NASCAR teams, and that's pretty amazing.
What is your goal with the business? Do you want to work here for 20 years? Is there an exit strategy in the next five years? Where do you want to go with the business?
This business that you've created is right in the wheelhouse of a lot of CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) companies. There's a lot of competition from the Gillette's of the world, as well as Harry's and Dollar Shave Club. This is going after a very different type of category or niche, and you're uniquely positioned as one of the few companies in that space.
So, what do you want to do?
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Paul Tran | Yeah, the way that we think about that is we never, or I personally never, create or build a business for the sole purpose of exiting with that in mind. I just feel like if you create a successful business that transcends fads, or that can be multigenerational, then the potential acquirers just come. It's natural.
So that's kind of how we think about it: let's build a really successful business. When you look back at the last 40 to 50 years, there aren't many brands that are able to be multigenerational. I mean, you look at it like Head and Shoulders; they've sure had generations upon generations. Right? Gillette, generations upon generations. Pantene... there aren't that many brands that are able to actually do that. | |
Moiz Ali | you've mentioned all procter and gamble brands they're gonna love that | |
Paul Tran | No, I mean, there's a whole bunch, right? There are a lot of Unilever brands as well. However, there are not that many that actually have the unit economics to be able to transcend.
What I mean by that is, it costs a lot of money to build a brand. It is really expensive to build a brand. If you're trying to sell a shampoo at retail and you're trying to build a business that way, there's no way you have enough margin to actually build a brand. You don't want to take 20 to 30 years to build a brand, right?
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Moiz Ali | sure | |
Paul Tran | You want to be able to spend $50,000,000 on marketing, right? And then grow that to $100,000,000 on marketing for 5 or 6 years, right?
You really want to have a global brand. Then, you start harvesting. I mean, that's kind of how we see it. You have to spend the money upfront; you have to pay your dues, right? You need to build that brand, really understand your audience, and create amazing products within those 5 to 6 or 7 years.
After that, you can really start harvesting. So, that's kind of how we see building a brand. We believe that with our unit economics, we recoup the capital on the first-time sale. So, beyond anything else, many...
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Moiz Ali | you're profitable on 1st unit sale | |
Paul Tran | We're profitable on the first unit sale, so we're able to recycle that cash very, very quickly. That's how we've been able to scale so quickly without any institutional funding. I think there are not that many companies that are able to do that.
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Moiz Ali | There's virtually no companies that are able to do that, especially like, you know, there are companies that can do that until they get to $4,000,000 or $5,000,000 in revenue. Virtually no companies are able to do that at $50,000,000 in revenue. That's why the Oways and Allbirds of the world have raised capital. | |
Paul Tran | Yeah, we're very fortunate that we are able to achieve beyond 9 figures in revenue without institutional capital. To have that kind of unit economics really helps us.
We believe this positions us to be multi-generational. We're going to grow this thing and are launching internationally. We're already in Australia, Canada, and the UK. It will be all of Europe, and within the next 3 to 5 years, we aim to be a truly global brand.
What's really interesting beyond that is the way we think about it. We are purely incremental. There’s no portfolio company in grooming care; we're probably the last frontier in male grooming.
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Moiz Ali | Agreed. Yeah, it's really amazing when, like, it's not like you're competing with Gillette. You're in the same category, and we're a P&G and acquirer of Manscaped. You would sit within their grooming category likely, but it's not like you're cannibalizing Gillette sales.
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Paul Tran | Exactly. You know, if anything, we can help it, right? We're truly incremental to the top line revenue.
If you look at men's hygiene in general, it's definitely growing, but it's not growing as fast as our category. Yeah, yeah.
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Moiz Ali | And that not only is it growing... I mean, your category is primarily growing because of you. I think that people rarely realize that when Native launched into Target, we grew their deodorant category something like 8% or 10% the first year. Rarely do... you know, Target hadn't seen that in a really long time. The men's below-the-waist grooming category isn't growing quickly, and you're riding those coattails. You're the reason that it's growing quickly.
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Paul Tran | You know, we're seeing very similar data with Target. Also, great partner; it's great to be working with them. They're phenomenal. Yeah, love Target. They're just phenomenal partners.
But we're seeing very similar things with them. Like, this category hasn't been innovated, and it's a brand new category. You know, we got lucky with the name "Manscaped" that we defined the category. | |
Moiz Ali | Yeah, yeah, fantastic name!
Okay, one last question. I put on Twitter, I said, "You know, I was interviewing you for a podcast. What should I ask you?" Someone from your own team actually asked me to ask you this. They said, "Have Paul guess how many gallons of boba tea the Manscaped team has consumed in total." Do you want to make a guess?
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Paul Tran | So, the reason behind this is my wife loves boba. She's like addicted to it. She got the entire company addicted to boba as well. I would say many, many, many hundreds of gallons of boba.
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Moiz Ali | okay if you had to give a give me a number because I'm gonna tweet at this guy and be like hey is this right or wrong | |
Paul Tran | I would say, oh man, because we order boba almost every day. I don't know, I gotta be like 120 gallons.
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Moiz Ali | Okay, no, you're definitely drinking more than 120 gallons if you order boba every day. That's for like 18 ounces. There are 70 people on the team, and probably 40 of them are getting boba. No, it's going to be... | |
Paul Tran | yeah our our boba budget is ridiculous | |
Moiz Ali | That is a great line item to have in a budget. When you're doing a P&L and sort of showing it to your board, you're like, "This is how much we're going to spend on boba."
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Paul Tran | this quarter | |
Moiz Ali | Paul, this was fantastic! I really love this conversation. I think you've, you know, aside from one of the things that I've realized about you, is that aside from having this incredible vision for the company and understanding where you fit within the CBG space, you also have these humble origins.
You still remember the perspective you had when you launched the business and were struggling to get the right messaging out. You were trying to understand how to get production up and what entrepreneurs go through when they're still much smaller businesses. I feel like very few people have that perspective, and it's so refreshing to hear because...
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Paul Tran | I think that a lot of people who are building 2 3,000,000 for | |
Moiz Ali | Or, who are at a $2,000,000 to $4,000,000 run rate, you know, don't necessarily want to talk about stuff that I brought up, which was like, "How do you think about budget?"
You go back and you're like, "Look, budget is what we think about today." The first two years, we called audibles on the line every time we went up there, and that was really great.
I love how you mentioned that because it makes me realize that sometimes I've forgotten what it was like to be in the trenches, and it makes me miss those days. So, I appreciate you sort of bringing that up and having that, you know, in the trenches type of mentality. That was fantastic.
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Paul Tran |
Oh, thank you. I really appreciate that. I think deep down at heart, I'm an entrepreneur and I'll always be an entrepreneur. You know, we... I think it's a special breed, and I celebrate all entrepreneurs out there because it takes guts to go out there and to sacrifice every single day to follow your dreams. It's not easy.
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Moiz Ali | I couldn't agree more with that. It takes a ton of guts. You know, you gotta stand up to your family and your friends who are, you know, at our age—certainly at my age—are like, you know, lawyers and are making a lot of money and have families.
And you're like, "You know what? I'm gonna put everything on the line." So, I have a ton of respect for those entrepreneurs and a ton of respect for the business—and you too.
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Paul Tran | no thank you appreciate it | |
Moiz Ali | Thanks so much, Paul. This was fantastic! I really appreciate your time. Congratulations on all the success!
I'm super excited. You know, after all of this, it also makes me realize how excited I am as an investor in Manscaped. I feel like when you said all this, I'm like, "Oh fantastic, my investment's doing really well."
So thanks again for all the time and for taking my money. I really appreciate that. | |
Paul Tran | thank you I'm I'm excited to see what your your next project's gonna be so | |
Moiz Ali | Me too. I don't know what it'll be. Hopefully, once this COVID stuff dies down, I'll think of something. Thanks, Paul. I really appreciate it.
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