Female Founder World

Jing Gao's the chili crisp queen behind Fly by Jing and today's guest on Female Founder World with Jasmine Garnsworthy! Listen in to learn Jing's hard-learned lessons about business partnerships, gaming the Kickstarter algorithm, and how to 10x your food business in its second year. Links Join the community and come to an event: www.femalefounderworld.com  www.instagram.com/jasminegarnsworthy www.tiktok.com/@jasgarnsworthy  Sign up for the newsletter: https://femalefounderworld.beehiiv.com Learn more about Fly by Jing: https://flybyjing.com/

For our 100th episode of Female Founder World, we're doing something a little different! Get to know our host and creator of Female Founder World, Jasmine Garnsworthy, in this special bonus episode.  Links Gorgias: https://www.gorgias.com/  Join the community and come to an event: www.femalefounderworld.com  www.instagram.com/jasminegarnsworthy www.tiktok.com/@jasgarnsworthy  Sign up for the newsletter: https://femalefounderworld.beehiiv.com

Tiffany Ju is our guest on Female Founder World! Tiffany’s bootstrapped hair accessory brand, Chunks, hit $40k in sales in her first year, $500k in year two, and in her third year, 2021, made over $1 million in sales—all without paid ads.  After being let go from her first 9-5 job in 2012, Tiffany began building her first business. She started dying tights in her kitchen and selling them on Etsy, which immediately went viral. She quickly discovered hand-dying tights wasn't a scalable business, and sales declined over time as the trend faded. Tiffany eventually closed her tights business and took a year off in 2018 to create art and explore her interests. She found a gap in the market for unique, high-quality hair clips, and Chunks was born. Things lined up: Tiffany already had experience manufacturing, the margins looked great, and there wasn’t much competition in the space at the time. Her tights business left Tiffany in debt, so she knew she had to bootstrap and be extremely resourceful this time around. Tiffany worked with manufacturers who accepted small orders, created her own website, invested in photography, and began testing the market. Chunks began primarily selling via wholesale since Tiffany was able to tap into her existing network from her first business. From there, the online orders began trickling in. In 2020 with stores closing and wholesale slowing down, Tiffany continued developing her customer base online and saw ecommerce taking off. Today, Chunks' business is split about 40% ecommerce and 60% wholesale. The business is doing over a $1 million in annual revenue and manages a team of 14. While Tiffany has prioritized hiring, she's refocused herself into a marketing director role, deciding that it's too early to bring on someone externally for that position.     Female Founder World is the place to meet your business besties online and IRL. Join our online community and get alerts about upcoming events in your city: www.femalefounderworld.norby.live Links Explore Chunks: http://chunks.shop/ Join Female Founder World's AMA to ask Tiffany your business questions on Thursday, 3 Nov 2022: https://momence.com/s/29672484  We're coming to Austin! Register for Female Founder World Austin presented by Gorgias: https://momence.com/s/52914247  Kabbage loans Project management tool: Monday.com Books: Profit First; Big Magic; Rocket Fuel; Traction; Who Not How; The eMyth; Radical Candor, Dare to Lead, Rise by Patty Azzarello; 4,000 Weeks; The Diamond Cutter Mindfulness: The Waking Up app Podcast: Aubrey Marcus; Andrew Huberman

We have Squigs founder Nikita Charuza on Female Founder World! Before launching her Ayurvedic haircare brand, Nikita was a fashion editor. And, in the six months since her brand launched, Nikita landed more than 50 press articles about Squigs, including in Vogue, Byrdie, Allure, Glamour, Teen Vogue, Nylon, and more publishers—all without working with a PR agency.  How did she do it? Listen to episode 98 of the Female Founder World podcast with Jasmine Garnsworthy to find out. Enjoyed the conversation? Take a screenshot and tag us on your Instagram stories @femalefounderworld and @jasminegarnsworthy. (Thank you :)) -- Female Founder World is the place to meet your business besties online and IRL. Join our online community and get alerts about upcoming events in your city: www.femalefounderworld.norby.live -- Links and resources Learn more about Squigs: https://squigsbeauty.com/ Join the Female Founder World online community to register for AMAs with the founders of Youthforia, Chunks and The Quick Flick: https://links.geneva.com/invite/00c30313-1566-470a-a764-62010d8301bd Register for Female Founder World's online AMA with Fiona Co Chan, founder of Youthforia

Karen Danudjaja, the bootstrapping baddie that built Blume to $7.5 million in sales and 2000 stockists (including Wholefoods!) is on Female Founder World today! The idea for a better-for-you latte line came to Karen in 2017 while working in corporate real estate, having multiple coffee meetings each day and then getting the caffeine jitters.  She started off working a full time nine-to-five and also running Blume at night. By the time Blume hit around $200,000 in sales, Karen went all in and quit her day job to grow the company.  “I felt like there was enough proof of concept, like returning customer feedback from retailers, that I was ready to go all in.” At the beginning cafes were her biggest customer, with healthy spots adding Blume’s superfood lattes to the menu. But when lockdowns hit, 85% of Blume’s business was food service—and it all shut down over night. Karen quickly brushed up on digital marketing and pivoted the company to ecommerce. “I took a digital marketing course March-April 2020 and then launched our first themed bundle for our ecommerce store in mid-April.”  After that, the business shifted to ecommerce-first during the height of the pandemic, before settling into a true omnichannel strategy that’s split 50% wholesale and 50% ecommerce and includes distribution across 2000 cafes, grocery, lifestyle stores, as well as the itsblume.com website. When Karen needed to find a cost-effective way to scale sales without hiring a team, she came up with a smart solution: build a separate, password-gated Shopify store with minimum order sizes for cafes and independent retailers to place bulk orders. “We duplicated our regular Shopify store, adjusted pricing and added a login. We have flows set up for them the same way we do for our DTC customers, targeting abandoned carts and returning customer, but set up specific for the needs of a retailer.” When bigger retailers like Wholefoods and Nordstrom wanted to stock Blume, Karen then built out her sales team. During all of this growth, Karen continued to bootstrap, which meant carefully managing cash flow was key. Her tip to other bootstrapped brands is to push back on retailers’ standard 90-day payment terms to make sure invoices are paid more quickly.  “We were really firm from the beginning with retailers that we couldn't do net 90 [to get paid for orders]. Because we were bootstrapped and we didn't have access [to cash], I just literally had to say no.” This year, after ending 2021 with $7.5 million in sales, Blume raised its first round of money from investors, closing $2.5 million in five weeks.  Feeling inspired? We have the exact pitch deck Karen used to raise $2.5 million in five weeks available for you to download in the Female Founder World community home. We’ve shared this resource as a first look at something exciting ✨new and shiny✨ Female Founder World is launching for our besties later this year. Enjoyed the conversation? Take a screenshot and tag us on your Instagram stories @femalefounderworld and @jasminegarnsworthy. (Thank you :)) -- Female Founder World is the place to meet your business besties online and IRL. Join our online community and get alerts about upcoming events in your city: www.femalefounderworld.norby.live -- Links and resources Explore Blume: itsblume.com  Streak email CRM: www.streak.com 'Meet 100 People' by Pat Hedley Asana: Asana.com Rebuy Typeform Klaviyo  

Coco Mocoe is today's Female Founder World guest, and she's diving into all things TikTok with host Jasmine Garnsworthy. Coco has nearly a million followers on TikTok where she acts like a crystal ball for pop culture and brand trends, predicting where digital culture is moving next.  In this episode Coco gets specific about what brands need to be doing if they want to succeed on TikTok over the coming year, and where she sees the platform changing.  Enjoyed the conversation? Take a screenshot and tag us on your Instagram stories @femalefounderworld and @jasminegarnsworthy. (Thank you :))     Female Founder World is the place to meet your business besties online and IRL. Join our online community and get alerts about upcoming events in your city: www.femalefounderworld.norby.live Links and resources Follow @cocomocoe on TikTok Follow @femalefounderworld on TikTok Follow @jasgarnsworthy on TikTok @KikizCosmetics @JemimaJune_ spliceapp.com  

Lizzie Waley is today's guest on Female Founder World! She's the cofounder of Sundae Body, a joyful beauty brand out of Australia that's best known for its fun body wash with a whipped cream texture.  Sundae Body went from zero to 1200 stockists before it even launched a website. In this interview, Lizzie tells Female Founder World host Jasmine Garnsworthy about how she managed such a high impact wholesale launch.  Enjoying the chat with Lizzie and Jasmine? Share it on Instagram Stories and make our day. Female Founder World is the place to meet your business besties online and IRL. Join our online community and get alerts about upcoming events in your city: www.femalefounderworld.norby.live Links and resources https://sundaebody.com https://apps.shopify.com/rebuy  The Resilience Project

Jaclyn Fu, founder of Pepper, is today's guest on Female Founder World! Jaclyn launched a DTC intimates brand selling bras for small-chested women, and since hitting the market with her Kickstarter campaign has sold over one million bras. Listen to today's episode of Female Founder World for Jaclyn's thoughts on marketing online in the current landscape, funding a business that traditional VCs just don't understand, and how to scale up your team. LINKS AND MENTIONS Subscribe to the Female Founder World newsletter: https://femalefounderworld.beehiiv.com  tiktok.com/@femalefounderworld instagram.com/femalefounderworld instagram.com/jasminegarnsworthy Learn more about Pepper: wearpepper.com 

Iris Smit built The Quick Flick into a reportedly $15-million-a-year business within five years—and that's after rejecting a $300,000 offer on Shark Tank. Her beauty brand is stocked in Australia's largest pharmacy and grocery stores, and did all of it while bootstrapping and learning how to be a CEO while on the job.  Learn Iris's must-use Shopify apps, mental health tips for entrepreneurs, and influencer marketing strategy in this episode of Female Founder World with Jasmine Garnsworthy. LINKS AND MENTIONS Subscribe to the Female Founder World newsletter: https://femalefounderworld.beehiiv.com  Register for Female Founder World x Shopify's Brand Camp in LA! https://losangeles.shopify.com/foundermixer0923  instagram.com/femalefounderworld instagram.com/jasminegarnsworthy Explore The Quick Flick: www.quickbeauty.com  Iris recommends Okendo, Zipify, Stockist Locator, Affiliatly, Triple Whale

By Rotation is the world's first social network where you can lend, rent, buy and sell designer fashion within one tech-powered community—and its founder, Eshita Kabra, is today's guest on the Female Founder World podcast.  LINKS Subscribe to the Female Founder World newsletter: https://femalefounderworld.beehiiv.com  Register for Female Founder World x Shopify's Brand Camp in LA! https://losangeles.shopify.com/foundermixer0923  instagram.com/femalefounderworld instagram.com/jasminegarnsworthy Explore By Rotation: www.byrotation.com