Fave hits: The blueprint to building a $100 million brand, with Hero Founder Ju Rhyu (part 1)

Joining me on the show today is Ju Rhyu, Founder of Hero Cosmetics. 

Hero makes super-powered skincare products to put you back in control of your skin and to help restore your confidence and they’re best known for their Mighty Patch acne patches. And here’s a super fun fact, they sell a box every 15 seconds with over 2 million boxes sold in over 8,500 retail doors.

That’s pretty Mighty I have to say, right? But what’s even crazier is that I just did a quick google of her last week when I was making a TikTok biz breakdown of the Hero journey and now she boasts of selling a product every 3 seconds. THREE Seconds. Can you imagine? In 2021 last year she did more than 100 million dollars in annual rev, in just 5 years of starting her biz. If that’s not wildly inspiring I don’t know what is. 

I discussed all sorts of things with Ju—from how she launched her brand exclusively through Amazon to how she found a manufacturer in South Korea and how she goes about driving crazy growth. But there’s one key takeaway in particular that I want to focus on today: Bootstrapping puts focus on profitability. 

Together with her two co-founders, each partner put personal capital into a dedicated bank account to get the business going. Many startup entrepreneurs find that having limited capital can prove to be a blessing in disguise. Because having a tight budget forces you to think twice about every move and be resourceful and creative. Further down the line, showing an investor that you’ve gone through this process and made it to the other side can be seen as a big plus for credibility and ultimately set you a higher valuation for the business. 

 Bootstrapping was good because it forced them to really focus on being profitable from the very beginning. They couldn’t pay themselves fancy salaries or spend too much on PR firms and those kinds of things. So it was ‘boots to the ground, approach’ which means they were always really resourceful. Which in turn makes them more attractive as a business to investors.

And I think this is such a key insight. We can get caught up in these stories and articles we read in the media celebrating founders who are going out raising millions of dollars before even launching a product and think that’s what we should be doing, but having to prove out your concept first, get traction and actually build a profitable business will put you in a much better position to raise down the track if you need to. Focus on bootstrapping your business in the beginning until you’ve proven traction and figured out the foundations. You might then find you don’t need to raise.  

In this episode, we’re covering why they decided to launch the brand exclusively through amazon, how she went about finding her manufacturer and what they do today to drive crazy growth. 

LINKS WE MENTION: 

Hero Cosmetic’s Website 

Hero Cosmetic’s TIkTok

Hero Cosmetic’s Instagram

Ju Rhyu’s Instagram

Female Startup Club's Instagram

Doone's Instagram

Doone's TikTok

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