How to Start a Smoothie Shop

The first 50 units of Bloom cost less than a thousand dollars to get started. "We did it so scrappy" The company is now sold in over 1,000 stores across the U.S. and Canada.

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Today we’re learning from Karen Danudjaja, the founder of Blume.

Blume is what happens when you pair the benefits of the wellness aisle and the experience of a cafe. They’ve bootstrapped the company to 10M in sales making your favorite cafe lattes with the magic of superfoods from Vancouver Canada.

We’re talking through that first year of business and how she approached getting her first 1000 customers, bootstrapping the brand until now, and her learnings from her first raise of $2m.

Something pivotal during that raising period is that Karen realized that she was someone who wanted to do everything. Save every single penny. So sales and customer service herself. In fact, every role possible herself. It's crazy what automation on just a few of those things came to do for the scale of the business. For example, when the first hire in customer service joined the team it made such a huge difference to be able to delve into strategy, sales, and development. You can never do everything, but if you surround yourself with people who want to help you succeed you're onto a real winner.

The founder also delved into a couple of tips regarding their influencer marketing strategy. They found this unique audience that supported women and small businesses and wanted to be part of something from the beginning. This meant their ambassador community runs more of the business than meets the eye, they’re super involved. With this, you're able to expand by working directly with people that align with your brand mission.

And whilst we're here, just a quick shout out to all the amazing humans listening into these episodes. I’ve been so happy and grateful recently about what we’ve been able to achieve together, all because you are tuning into these episodes and supporting the show. We’ve got a few exciting things in the works that I can’t wait to share with you soon.

Let’s get into this episode, this is Karen for Female Startup Club.

LINKS WE MENTION:

Karen's Instagram

Blume's Instagram

Female Startup Club's Instagram

Doone's Instagram

Doone's TikTok

Aspire website

How I Built This Podcast

Good to Great Book

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