← The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
570: Your Toothbrush is GROSS - They Fixed it and Made MILLIONS | SURI
00:59:42
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- [00:02]
Nathan Chan
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- [00:49]
Mark
When people try the product, they don't like it. They love it. The way they describe it, the way it's changed their life, it sounds kind of crazy, but those people then become such advocates. They're telling their friends, their family, and then those people also love it. And you can see then how it kind of grows. You want to know why Suri has grown so quickly? Go and read those reviews.
- [01:09]
Nathan Chan
They're the co founders of Suri, who turned an everyday habit into over a $40 million brand.
- [01:14]
Mark
From 5,000 pre orders to 10,000 glowing reviews. Here's how they built the world's most loved electric toothbrush. We actually had this pretty big disaster that felt existential in our very first week of shipping. We had a call from our 3 PL one day saying, oh, we haven't actually shipped any of the products. There's been a problem with labeling. And it just felt in that moment, the world was hauling around us.
- [01:34]
Giv
Gone are the days when you can just drive sales and lose lots of money. Nobody wants to support those businesses anymore. Today it's much more about how do we make sustainable businesses, Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the founder podcast with Nathan Chan.
- [02:00]
Nathan Chan
All right, well, let's start from the beginning. What sparked this idea for Shuri?
- [02:08]
Mark
Well, to start and explain that. Actually, it's probably worth explaining where we first met. So it's a really funny, bizarre story, but we were both at this thing called the Cannes Lions Festival, which is like the Oscars of the advertising industry. And I just, by total luck, had a conversation with the chief marketing officer of Unilever, who told me he was hosting a party off the coast of Cannes and someone had dropped out. Would I like to come along. And so I said, yes, of course. And then he said, well get down to Pier 2 at 1:30pm there's going to be a rib that's taking you across the island. Say my name and you can come. And I jumped onto that boat. And then to my left was Sir Martin Sorel, the founder of the world's largest advertising agency group wpp. And Sabbath item was, was this guy. And at the time I had my own agency and I really would love to sell it to wpp. So we got chatting at the island and it turned out that we both had started our careers at Procter and Gamble, me in sales and marketing, even.
- [03:07]
Giv
In marketing and finance at Gillette.
- [03:10]
Mark
And you know, we were just chatting generally about business. And he said to me, like, hey Mark, do you ever think about like all the waste that was created by, you know, the brands that we worked on, you know, on mass scale, all the plastic, all the excessive packaging and you think that, you know, consumer experience could actually be really improved with the product a bit like the way that Apple have improved, you know, the way they do things. And that was the spark of the idea.
- [03:35]
Giv
Yeah, completely. We, I mean that was actually eight years ago, so it took us some time to come to market. You know, we, we spend a lot of time doing consumer research. And then finally three years ago we jumped into it.
- [03:50]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, and so you guys came up with the idea eight years ago, started thinking about it, but you launched three, four years ago.
- [03:58]
Mark
So what happened was in between, I sold my business giv worked, parachuted into some e commerce companies on behalf of a vc. And then it was actually then we started doing research and we found out that every year over 4 billion toothbrushes are thrown away and end up in landfill. Notion Nathan. Probably almost every brush you've ever used since you were a child still exists somewhere. Which is absolutely crazy when you think of like all, all the waste across all the people who brush their teeth. So we thought, well let's dig into it further. And we researched with thousands of people and found out that. Well actually here's a good question, like do you use an electric toothbrush?
- [04:33]
Nathan Chan
Yes.
- [04:33]
Mark
And you've been using it for a while, right? 10 years.
- [04:35]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, long time. As I said.
- [04:38]
Mark
Right. And how often do you use the Bluetooth function? When you do, do you connect to your phone?
- [04:44]
Nathan Chan
No, never.
- [04:45]
Mark
No, never. Right. Do you ever get that horrible gunk on the bottom, you know, crusty, hot, yet absolutely foul. Many people tell us they don't take it when they go traveling because they're bulky charing. You have this, like, charger that only works on your toothbrush. And so not only are they not sustainable, but there's all these features that, you know, people don't enjoy. And so we thought lots of people brush their teeth with a product that's unsustainable and an experience they don't enjoy. What if we can make a product that's both more sustainable and. And more enjoyable to use? And that was the. That was the foundation of the idea for Surrey, which is short for Sustainable Rituals.
- [05:22]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. Love it. So talk me through, guys. Like, why, why. Why did you guys think you'd be a great pair to start a business together? Like, I don't do many interviews in a group, but I'd love to hear from a more personal side, like, what was the spark? What was kind of like, you know, let's do this thing together. So we.
- [05:45]
Giv
We started the idea, came up eight years ago, and then we, We. You know, I think sometimes things get in the way when you want to launch things. And it took a while. It took a lot of research, it took a lot of. I just needed to be pushed into it, right? And took one of actually founders courses, I was saying earlier, six years ago. And so I had a lot of motivation, but the time was never really right. And then came Covid and I had started working on a deck, resurfacing the idea, trying to get some designs done. And I bumped into Mark in the park because obviously we were in lockdown and we couldn't go around. And I was desperate to find somebody to join me at the time. And I remember playing really hard to get, saying, hey, Mark, you know, we had this idea. Do you want to bring it to life? You know, And I was like, I probably don't need somebody to help me, but it'd be really great you could join.
- [06:36]
Mark
And I.
- [06:36]
Giv
And I played really hard to get. And I was like, you know what? He's probably not going to join. Next day, he calls me up, he's like, I'm 100% in. When are we doing this? Like, I'm not working right now. This is the perfect time. And for the next sort of whatever I'd say half a year. We were on Zoom 24. 7. You know, we talk to each other more than we talk to our wives. Our. Our Zoom cameras were pretty much portals in our house where we were just walking into a room, talking. We'd walk out, get lunch, and it was intense. I mean, we overlooked whether we were the right partnership for sure. And we're happy to share some stories around it. We're very different people and I think that is our magic today, that we've made that work. But definitely when you're on camera 12 hours a day talking to somebody remotely, it's not easy in the beginning for sure.
- [07:27]
Mark
It's been a strength ultimately because we are so, so different. Gee's very detailed. I'm much more big pict. You know, we have different like speciality backgrounds but just personality wise we're so different. And like being totally honest, like you know, during those hours, like we would say things to each other and you'd be like, that's kind of like that kind of annoyed me the way he said that. And then, then I'd probably be a little bit prickly and be like, oh well you said this and I'm going to act like that. And so quite early on we were.
- [07:58]
Giv
Like, it accentuates when you're on Zoom, right? I mean obviously the founders, the number, they say number three reason companies fall apart is founders fault, right. Maybe it's number two. And when you're on Zoom in the extension. So I think we were fortunate to be in that period that we learned how to deal with it a lot quicker rather than waiting maybe two years to be like, oh, you know, we don't get along on these areas. And we had this thing, you know, we used to call it Friday complaining sessions or bitching sessions. I could say that. And we would, we. That's what we started with. And that was our sort of therapy session where we would. It started out when Friday, 10 o' clock one day. Mark's like, can we just chat about like what's not working between us? And I was like, what do you mean everything's working? Of course, being like, I had a list of things I remember like there.
- [08:42]
Mark
Must be things that like I do that annoy you and gives like no, no, like everything's all good, Everything's all good. I was like, well I'll go first then. Because my mother like was a, was a therapist, was a marriage counselor for a long time. And so I just thought, you know what, let's, let's just get this stuff out into the open. And it was amazing because I really learned quickly. Like I would say to Keith, hey, you said this the other day. And like it really like annoyed me because. And he was like, oh no, no, like that's not what I meant. And I was like, what?
- [09:11]
Giv
Like.
- [09:11]
Mark
But I'd attached this meaning to like this thing that he had said. And then that annoyed me. And then he was like, oh, no, no. I was. I was actually just worried about this. And. And that. That was like, oh, wow, okay. And then after I shared a few of mine, he was like, actually, now that I come to think about it. And then, you know, sure enough, you know, we went through it, but it really meant that we cleared the air super quickly.
- [09:30]
Giv
And I think at the end of day, we want. We, like most co founders, want the same goal scale, be profitable, get great success, potentially a liquidation event. But the reality is we all come from very different backgrounds. You know, even if we're from the same country, which we're not where we lived in multiple places around the world, we have different, you know, styles of working. Our parents are different. I mean, the cultures we were raised in. And so when you really take a step back, you realize people think ultimately differently and they come to similar. They have similar desires and goals, but the way they work is different. And if you can learn to respect that and so to say, like, I get you meant that and you want this, but I'm looking at it this way, should we consider this? Then you can sort of find a way to slot in your differences, to build the sort of super superpower that you want to achieve. And I think so many times people overlook that sort of soft skill of making things work. And really, it's a trust element. Like, I can come to market and be like, that was terrible. I hated the way that meeting ran. And I think we should do it differently. And I really didn't like it when you said that in the meeting. You know, what do you think I didn't do? Well, how can we do this better?
- [10:35]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, And I think it really. I can see you guys have that common sense of trust and that common respect, and I think that that's. That's how speed is built on trust. Right? Like, you've got to have that trust. So talk me through. Guys like, you say you had this idea eight years ago, you came together, eventually launched this product. How much can you share? How much it cost initial moq? Like, how did you bring it to life? Because a lot of people, I read it in the YouTube comments every. All the time. Like, I wish Nathan would go deeper on how they actually built the product. Product, how they actually created it, how did they manufacture it? What was moq? How much did it cost? Like, talk me through those. Integrate details.
- [11:25]
Mark
So I think a few things. One, you know, scaling a brand with lots of stock, which is, you know, expensive cost money and it's fair to say, like, you know, we didn't have like a huge, huge, huge amount of money to start with. So even like with the concept, we took it to angel investors and said, hey, look, we've got this great idea, we got this relevant background, and we've got this vision for the future. We need to raise some, some capital. And so we did a pre seed investment round and raised £800,000. And so, you know, that gave us enough money to then be like, okay, we'll place our orders with the factories. We went to what, 24 different factories?
- [12:06]
Giv
Yeah.
- [12:07]
Mark
And they were all like, that can't be done. Like, what, what you're saying, the materials, that's not possible. Now, fortunately, I'm sat beside one of the most stubborn, determined people I think you ever met. Because, like, after 25June, I was like, maybe this isn't possible. Like, should we just compromise in certain areas? But Giv was like, determined. You'd done the research and just kept going. So I think that was such a. When I look back, that was one of the most crucial things, that there was just this absolute determination that we could do things very, very differently than they'd been done before.
- [12:42]
Giv
Yeah. And I would just add that to all any entrepreneur out there trying to do something different. The goal is very much to do something that is meaningfully differentiated. And I'll talk a bit about that. But the reality is when you talk to a factory, that's exactly the opposite of what they want to do. They want to make what they've already made skin differently. And for them, innovation is efficiency. I can make these models, I can slightly adjust them, and then I can continue to make more margin because I've made them for a while and that's great. But the market doesn't want that. You know, people want to see things that are meaningfully differentiated. And I would just sort of dig into and you need to have a strong margin. That's, that's, that's, you know, at least I would say above 70%, and that's what we were targeting. And it's a negotiation. And so I would say once you've found the partner that is really willing to work with you, you have to be willing to accept, to negotiate. I'm not very good at negotiation. Mark is epic at it, and I would say it takes you out of your comfort zone. But in the beginning, when you start, you have the worst terms on everything. Whether it's with your factory or Shopify or any site, they're just giving you the worst terms. And it's kind of counterintuitive. You'd think an early stage company would get better terms because they need support. But the reality is until you have scale, everybody gives you the worst sort of like payment terms, the worst sort of variable costs. And so, you know, it's important to start with something that you can work with, but then after three months negotiating even better prices, after six months being like, can we get a better payment fee on, on Shopify, sorry, Shopify. But like anything, right? And I think that's important because there are clients that are at much higher volumes that are getting significantly better deals than you and for your survival, that that is critical.
- [14:26]
Mark
Well, one day I would add though, because, you know, for your audience, like just some, a couple of people I really admire. I don't know if you are familiar with True Classic. Yeah, but they scaled, you know, to hundreds of millions of dol as Bootstrapped. And Ryan, who was a former professional poker player, you know, from the very beginning, you know, sat in front of some of the biggest factories and persuaded them to give him. I think I, I can't, I'm not exactly sure, but I think like 90 or 180 day payment terms, which is what enabled him to do it from the start. And so although he's absolutely right, like, you know, no one wants to do that at first, it's definitely possible. And some of the best entrepreneurs I've met have thought really upfront about the importance of, you know, payment terms, negotiation, ensuring that you have like breaks like, so that, you know, when you hit this volume, the price is going to come down and you do that all up front. I really think that's a bit of overlooked advice that I would definitely sort of rethink about if I was to set up other future E commerce companies.
- [15:25]
Giv
Yeah, I just add on the differentiation because differentiation is, you know, it's vital for success because I, you know, Everybody talks about MVPs. The reality is anybody can find a product in Alibaba, Reskin it and get some good branding work done for maybe a few thousand pounds. Maybe not epic branding work, but some branding work and they can start this out. So the market has become so much more competitive in almost every category today. And so really you need to find out how can you meaningfully differentiate your product and find a way that is desirable. And so we did 5,000 customer interviews. We didn't have a lot of money in the beginning and we used Survey Monkey. You can get like 200 responses for 50 quid. Quite fast. And we asked, you know, questions about what people wanted. Everything around, like, I hate the fact that my brush doesn't last more than seven days on a charge. Well, ours, we last 40 days. I hate that it has a gunk build up. We have a stainless steel plate under our brush that, that makes it practical, it's not a fake background. And, and you, that stainless steel plate, it's just easy to wipe off so you don't have like gunk that builds up. These are little pain points that larger brands were just completely ignoring. And one thing that they were focusing on was apps that we found out nobody was using. And so we said, how can we just make the experience better? How can we deliver an exceptional performance? Because it's kind of table stakes in the category. And then as a foundation also, how do we push the boundaries in terms of sustainability? You know, we have plant based heads, we recycle them for free. We have a brush that has an aluminum body that is more durable than others.
- [17:00]
Mark
So yeah, and the culmination of like it's kind of business 101. You read about this stuff, but it's so easy to overlook. It's like listening to your customer, you know, like that 40 day battery life is more important. You know, the travel case, the fact that it's slim, it's beautiful, it's, you know, it's more sustainable. Like these were things that customers truly wanted and just by listening to them and developing the product for exactly that, that that's why we're now the most highly rated electric toothbrush in the world with a 4 out of 5 rating on Trustpilot with over 10,000 reviews. It's really based on, on listening to customers and delivering what they want, which I think, you know, is so applicable to any great brand with longevity.
- [17:41]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, you mentioned something there interesting to me around the validation piece, right? You did 5,000 customer interview surveys. Why not like, how did you do that and how much did it cost? And like talk me through that because that's interesting, right? Like not many people would do that.
- [18:00]
Giv
So that, that is. So we, we, we set that up on, we set them up on SurveyMonkey. We, we combined them with qualitative reviews. You got to look at the setting also. It was Covid. So it's very hard to do qualitative reviews. So it's almost like we had to do it in a park or walking and talking to people and that would, we tried to stay away from friends and family, which is the first starting point of most, you know, Customer surveys, because they're always going to bias towards. It's a great idea. And so random people we chose. You can easily choose the sort of segment of, you know, you know, how much money they make, you know, disposable income, where they're based. And then we, we started with simple concept slides. So you can, you can create a little concept slide which shows what you're like, a rough sketch of your product. The less pretty the better because then they're not judging it on the design. Say, what are the key benefits? And then start out with, like, what product do you use? How often do you use it? What do you think of the concept slide? What would you pay for this? In pricing, there's the waste sort of test, which is sort of four things you want to ask, which is, at what point do you think this product would be too expensive? You never consider it. At what point do you think this product would be too cheap? You think it's badly made, and that gives you sort of two outliers of like, cool. These are the boundaries I should stay away from. And then at what point do you think this product is not too expensive? But I need some time to think about it because it's a meaningful amount that I'm paying for. And then the next one is, at what point do you think this would be a good bargain? And so you get these four curves that get you a really good idea of like, cool. This is the price area I can play in for this concept without even thinking about design and features yet, or visual features.
- [19:34]
Mark
And to the exact software, there's multiple ones. We use SurveyMonkey predominantly. And then you just pay a set amount per number of customers. And then we scale that up, depending whether we're looking in, like, the US market, UK market, different ages, et cetera, but using exactly the second thing.
- [19:50]
Giv
And I don't recommend this for everybody. We came from Procter and Gamble, so for us, share data was really important. We wanted to know what was the retail share. So we must. We spent quite a lot of money on that. I mean, I, I say at the time, I think we spent £5,000 on getting share in major developed markets. And we saw this trend that kind of would scare most people, which is that two brands dominate in almost every market. They have a 75% share. Those two brands, Oral B and Philips. And so it was a bit us, uk, Australia, all around the world. And so we thought, well, maybe people don't want a new brand if they're really happy with these two brands. And so that's when we, in the qualitative interviews, we really started digging into it and we found this really common thread that surprised us, which is we'd ask people, what do you brush with? I used to. Or electric brush. Okay. You know, how much did you pay for? I paid 100 quid for it. All right. How long ago? Several years ago. How often do you use it? Every day. Twice a day, except when I travel. What's the name of the brand? It's the one that does this or does this. And here we were thinking you spent quite a lot of money on this product. Use it twice a day. And you can't tell us the name of the brand. That tells us that the loyalty is really through. Sort of like it was available on shelf rather than, I love this brand. Most brands that you use every day that you love, you can name. And so for us, that told us now that wasn't everybody, but that was a common thread we saw. And a meaningful amount of people that were like, wow, that means that people don't love these products. They're just there and they're using them. Maybe they're recommended by their dentist.
- [21:25]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, that's a good pickup. And that's. That's your product development shops coming through, right?
- [21:30]
Giv
That's it. Exactly. Yeah. And so there we were like, cool. We really need to make something. People love the subtleties that they go, wow, why didn't. Why didn't anybody else think of this? And also the sound like, I'm gonna try and see. Like, they're really loud. Like, we tested with our wives in the beginning, like, can we have a conversation or at least hear them talk to us? Like, I don't know if you can hear it. It's not very loud at all, you know, so just focusing on. On some of the subtleties and features like that.
- [21:58]
Nathan Chan
All right, take me back. How long did it take? Obviously, when you, you know, you went to angels, you spoke to many different factories. You obviously did the whole China tour. From placing that first MOQ to launch, how long did that take?
- [22:18]
Giv
Too long?
- [22:18]
Mark
No, from placing the order, I think it was about nine months. There were various delays. We wanted to launch sooner, but there was delays and delays and delays. But what was Amazing is the MOQ was 5,000 units, and within. We'd actually. We totally sold out before we even shipped the first product. So we'd had a pre sale, which it was kind of great. But then when we shipped the first product, we went back in to pre sale.
- [22:48]
Giv
So for like two months.
- [22:49]
Mark
And then we sold out again. And it was, it was, it was an exciting time. But you know, we actually had this pretty big disaster that felt existential in our very first week of shipping. So it was, it was just one of those like early terrible moments where you just think like we're over, it's done. And the reason was people had been waiting to ship the have their products received. They, they pre bought it. And a bunch of those customers were in the U.S. you know, we, we sent an email to everyone saying, hey, we, we've sent out the product. But then two weeks later we had a call from our 3 PL one day saying like, oh, we haven't actually shipped any of the products to the customers in the US there's been a problem with the labeling. And it just felt in that moment the world was crushed, like falling around us. I remember distinctly it was just the two of us, plus I think it.
- [23:45]
Giv
Was like 3,000 orders that we had already been. There's a bit of context. We've been as most products we had said we were going to launch four months before and we were delayed every month people were telling us they were going to get refunds. And I think we, it was about, we were about three people at the time and we were all on, just on our, on our customer service software. Gorgeous. You know, constantly writing back to customers, being like, we just wanted to let you know there's going to be another month delay, sorry about this. And we just thought everybody would go for refunds and instead because we were writing them all personally, we got emails back being like no problem. We're, you know, like thank you so much for writing me personally and taking the time to explain this to me. You know, look forward to getting it. And I think then we always knew that customer experience was important. I think that was a sort of foundational moment where we're like, look, if we treat our customers well and we really care about them and treat them like people and we're constantly reaching out to them and talking to them. That is something that will, that will differentiate our business from our competitors, which they're not doing today. So that was a moment where, I mean it was painful in the sense that we were answering emails 247 but it, it did, it got us over the line and it's become a foundational sort of value for us.
- [24:54]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, and look, that's what you have to do like in, you know, doing things that don't scale. Right. Like that's, that's grassroots early days, getting close to the Customer. The closer you are to the customer, the better the products. So you kind of skipped over something that I think a lot of people's ears would perk around is like you sold Basically all your 5000 units in the first day of launch, right? How did you do that? Like talk us through, like that's not easy. What did you guys do there? Talk us through. What was some key decisions that you made to make the product? Besides creating an epic product, you left no stone unturned around recyclable heads, sonic power, UV clinic, all these cool things. The product was truly unique in its kind. But what did you do from a marketing perspective to sell out your product and just drive so much?
- [25:47]
Giv
So one thing that I didn't mention on product validation that we did when we got past sort of the surveys and we got initial concepts, we started doing landing pages to, to see if people would sign up to emails. We used meta predominantly. I had worked at a few startups before where I had seen how hard it was to scale with meta because Meta can just, CPAs can be quite high. So I knew a little bit on, on how to use meta and we basically did, did ads to landing pages to see which elements people liked more, particularly from communication point of view. So that when it came time to launch we knew that sustainability was really important. But it couldn't be the only feature we were driving in our ads. And so we had pre launch ads. We thought really hard about going into Kickstarter which a lot of people do for hardware. But we knew we wanted to move on really quickly. We take an angel investment and become an e commerce store. So we did our pre launch on Shopify and we built our, our site ready to go and it was just a pre launch page all there. Which in hindsight made us not do two things. You know, because you have to learn all about Kickstarter and build Kickstarter's page and then you have to learn about Shopify and it's just a bit of stubble work. So that worked out really well for us, most of it. You know, I really want to say this. There's a lot of tips around, at least at the time. There was so much around referral marketing, viral marketing, creating people. And I thought that was gonna, it wasn't working when we started doing some of the sort of viral sharing and referrals and instead because of the incentives, we were getting the wrong customers. We were getting people who just wanted a discount and free products rather than actually really sharing. They'd found ways to game the system. And I spoke to a friend of mine who worked at Meta and I said, and he did, he didn't, but he did at the time working on brands that were scaling. I said listen, what are your sort of growth tactics when I don't have a lot of money, like how are we going to really scale this company? And he said, Kev, you got to nail ads. He's like, it is if ads and influencers I would add as well later on. But he's like, it's one or the other. You need to nail a channel that scales and reaches a lot of people. And so we spent a lot of time really sort of finding the storytelling elements of our pre sale ads that would really drive a pre sale and then obviously a healthy discount helps.
- [28:10]
Mark
So I think there's another element which was really important. And you know, I think we also follow as well as founder there's a guy, Nick Sharma, who does a lot of tips on D2C and yeah, he, I'm sure I read in one of his emails about you know, trust and this element of like you're launching a new brand and so you know, if you think from a consumer's perspective they're, they're looking at spending money and it's like how can you reassure people? And so, you know, we have 100 day money back guarantee. So that, that was one element. But very early on we had a big stroke of luck where we sent our product to some different journalists and one of them who is, you know, they, they write reviews of the best electric toothbrushes. So if you type best electric toothbrush into Google, they were the number one search UK and they, they said this is the best toothbrush, like this is coming soon and like that is going to be great. And so that we were able then to use that legitimacy and to borrow the trust from, from that brand to show like, hey look, this is, this is a real thing and to try and reassure people. And even I would say in the first year a lot of people like, oh, I'm not, I wasn't sure if this is, you know, like going to be good. And so I think just building that trust with the consumer and sort of validating it through, you know, real life reviews or people with authority who also believe in a product.
- [29:37]
Giv
And it was really crucial just to build on that. Early days, obviously the ads are important but I kind of went over this a little too fast. PR was really important to what Mark was saying. We were constantly reaching out to journalists, trying to get sort of free Awareness. We applied to awards left, right and center. I think one of the moments for us that, that, that was really validating was we, we won 250000 pounds from the Sunday Times for their Earth Fund. And that was just like in our pre launch stage they're like here's 250000 free advertising which you know, I would say that, that really we were then able to put all these like full page spread prints in, in, in the Sunday Times which had a highly affluent sort of readership. And so after that we must, we, I think 20% of our time was just applying to awards and trying to get journalists to write about us or maybe even more in the beginning.
- [30:36]
Mark
The great thing about it as well is that it's like very low cost. Do you know what I mean? Like it's, it's tagged, it's, it's time. But like you know when, when you're at the start and you're being scrappy, you know, it's like anything like that has like such a high reward ratio for investment.
- [30:51]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, I was going to say it's interesting. The PRPs like interview some founders and it's been so game changing for them. But then you hear, you know, other founders doing, don't, don't really rely on those kind of traditional media channels. But yeah, that's a great insight. So I'm curious around what happened next. So you've built this incredible product, extreme demand. Like this was only three years ago, right? Like three years ago guys as well, Facebook introduced something called iOS14. So for, so for a lot of us old school, been in the game a while, paid, you know, pay to play, marketers, founders, whatnot, that was not the easiest time to navigate. So you guys have had tremendous growth. It sounds like you've, you've still built a really large channel through paid media. Like what happened next?
- [31:59]
Giv
Well, just on iOS 14, it was definitely painful for us too I would just add. And you know we, we were spending money on, on Facebook and the dashboard was saying we were making no sales, which the perfect, like we didn't have very much money but we were getting sales. And I was like, I don't know these customers so where are they coming from? They must be, we must be getting through Facebook. So the tracking was totally off. But we're like look, if we're spending money, we're making money then let's just forget what the dashboard, which sounds ridiculous but we were just looking at total numbers. I spent this, I made this, right. And so that Worked out really well not to look at the dashboards and the CPAs at that point in time, because the tracking just wasn't making sense. And it's gotten better now, but I'd still say with, you know, AI audiences, ASC and PMAX on Google. But. But it's. It's still not perfect to. Back in the day when you had really good tracking.
- [32:48]
Mark
To your question, like, what's. What's driven the growth? And I think where we're really lucky is when people try the product, they don't. They don't like it. They love it. Like, if, like, you know, we have these 10,000 reviews, the 4.8 out of 5 rating. But yeah, I would ask anyone, you know, if you're looking at setting up your own business and you want to know why Siri has grown so quickly, like, go and read those reviews because you have people writing the following things. Like, and, you know, you can see it really clearly. Like, I've never written a review before, but, oh, my goodness, I think I love my toothbrush. Like, I, you know, I'm 50 years old and I've never enjoyed brushing my teeth. Now I look forward to. I'm brushing my teeth four times a day because I enjoy it so much. And like, look, you know, we. We love the brand, but, like, there are people who really love it and the way they describe it and like, the way it's changed their life is. It sounds kind of crazy, but, like, it truly is.
- [33:47]
Giv
Like, you know, I love brushing my teeth.
- [33:49]
Mark
Have a look.
- [33:50]
Giv
And holy crap, I've never said that before. Like, they. These are real reviews. And so as we obviously have negative reviews too. Like, our package didn't arrive. You know, I dropped it and it broke.
- [33:59]
Mark
And. Or some people, you know, it's just not for them. But, like, now a really decent portion of our business comes from an excuse, the pun, word of mouth. And so, you know, when. When we talk about, like, you know, what's helped drive it. So, like, you know, ads drive awareness to get some initial sales, but those people then become such advocates that they're telling their friends, their family, and then those people also love it. And you can see then how it kind of grows. And then you combine that with an enormous market. Everyone brushes their teeth, and you can see where a lot of that growth has come from.
- [34:31]
Giv
I mean, and then just in terms of our journey, you know, we started out really lean. We were three people. And then in the first year, I think we were 5 or 7, did about 2 million sales. And then we went on to do 10 million and then 30 million. We're now 36 people. For us, it was really important to try and maintain profitability because I think gone are the days when you can do this and just drive sales and lose lots of money. Nobody wants to look at this, nobody wants to support those businesses anymore. And valuations have gotten lower so you can't go and raise tons of money. So. And it doesn't make sense probably also too like that, that whole model I think was a model maybe that maybe wasn't a proven. There's a few winners and very many losers. And I think today it's much more about spreading it even like how do we make sustainable businesses that, that are just healthy.
- [35:25]
Mark
Our name is sustainable Rituals and we just did not like buy into this idea of just like raise lots of money, lose lots of money and one day things will work out. It's like to be sustainable you need to be profitable. Right? You can't, you can't be sustainable if you're not profitable. And so that's been a key focus from day one.
- [35:44]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, I look, it's funny how fast the market changed, right? Like post that covert piece, things really changed. Everyone thought it would last forever. I was guilty of it as well. And yeah, I think things really change fast. And now it's. Yeah, that's, that's what's definitely in vogue in the business world is, you know, staying profitable, having a profitable business. It is harder though to you know, grow and grow profit at the same time. But it sounds like you guys have been able to do that. You mentioned you know where like do you. When. So it sounds you able to talk about like you said year three at 36. Where do you think you guys will. Where you forecasting for year four?
- [36:31]
Mark
A lot, A lot.
- [36:32]
Giv
Ask us at the end of the year.
- [36:35]
Mark
So we have, we have some, I mean we, we can't share too much now, but we have some really genuinely game changing, exciting things. And, and it's not one, it's like three different very significant innovations. Innovations and, and new news that's coming and that, that could be a real game changer I think for the size of the business.
- [36:56]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. Okay, interesting. So you guys also have a pretty strong retail push as well. You guys are in Amazon Selfridges. Why, why not just a D2C talk us through that strategy.
- [37:10]
Mark
So yeah, sure. So we, we are, we're customer obsessed, right? Like everything we do is for the customer. And the truth is the customer, they, they love to shop on Amazon Sometimes they're in Boots. Boots is in the UK that sells 35% of all electric toothbrushes that are sold in the UK are through Boots. And it's somewhere that people go, you know, every week, every month and has got like a great reputation for being, you know, great health and wellness beauty retailer. We're super lucky that Gwyneth Paltrow's company Goop, you know, picked us up and, you know, they absolutely love the brush and, you know, we became the top selling product there actually on Amazon, we were very lucky to be invited to join their sustainability accelerator. So we were actually heading. Our office was in the European headquarters of Amazon for the first year. So they incubated us and gave us a ton of support.
- [38:06]
Giv
It's pretty amazing.
- [38:07]
Mark
And I'm like, honest, it's one of the proudest things right now that for the last, I think 10 weeks we've been the number one best selling Sonic toothbrush on, on Amazon, which is about 40% of the market. So for us, like, we don't think of a company as a channel. There's a lot of brands before who are like, oh, we're a D2C brand. And there's like, no, like, DTC is a channel, a brand is, is just a brand. And like how people want to shop and where people want to shop, we want to be available at the point at which they're making their decision. So that necessitates that, you know, we have a DTC business, an Amazon business, but also a retail business.
- [38:42]
Giv
And I would just add that from a. For people starting businesses early stage. We started DTC only retail, obviously. Like, they're, they, they didn't take us. They wrote to them consistently like, we don't know who you are, go away. Of course Mark says I'm stubborn, but he is persistent also. And like he didn't take no for an answer. So he found every. But he's very charming at the same time. So whether it's texting, any way you get in. So the good thing about that is DTC as a starting channel. We were able to grow awareness through Meta. And then when we got to a certain point, then we turned on Amazon and then people shop there because maybe it was more convenient for them. And then by that point retail were like, when can we list? You know, let's talk again. And so when you have enough and you don't want to go into retail without a certain level of awareness because then they'll just sit on shelf and be like, I've never Heard of that brand, I'm not going to buy it, but you can use very much so DTC media channels to drive awareness for your offline retail channels. And, and the other thing is we also looked at retail from a marketing point of view. So we went into some specialty stores or one very premium store. Erewhon in LA is it's kind of probably the most premium retailer. They have about 2011 stores in LA. Most premium retailer that celebrities shop from consistently. We went to them early on and that has been a great marketing awareness channel. You know, people obviously buy a lot of products from there, but if they haven't, they'll be, you know, they'll recognize us, it boosts awareness and then maybe they'll buy it from somewhere else or, or there.
- [40:08]
Mark
And we have these beautiful displays in Erewhon. And I don't think it's a coincidence that a few of the Kardashian family posted about us because their local grocery store is the Erewhon in Calabasas. And so, you know, we kind of started building relationship that way. But I think there's a guy I follow on LinkedIn, I think, I can't remember who it is, but I think he's the CEO of Chubby's or something. But he just looks mathematically like if you look at the number of people who are purchasing products and where they purchase, you know, E commerce, like in different categories obviously. But in, you know, in our category, the vast majority of people around the world buy their electric toothbrushes in retail, not online. And so if you sort of think to yourself, I'm just going to focus in this area, like by all means you could build a great business. But you're going to miss, you know, this, this like massive portion of consumers who want to buy it in a retail environment. So I think to think about like an omnichannel strategy is really just to think about a shopper strategy. Like what does a shopper do and how do they want to purchase things?
- [41:12]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. And I want to honor something really interesting about Suri that I recognize. Fast Company named you guys one of the most innovative brands in the world. How did you find out about that? Like how, like what was that recognition? Like, why do you think that is?
- [41:34]
Giv
That was.
- [41:35]
Mark
We became second to Walmart. In fact, the ceremonies in New York.
- [41:38]
Giv
Among E couples, of course.
- [41:40]
Nathan Chan
Yeah.
- [41:42]
Mark
So we're hoping to get the top spot next time. But no, like, again, this is so cheesy. This. I, I'm not a cool guy, right? So like, I'm not Going to even pretend to be cool. Like, we're huge Nathan Chan fans, we're huge founder fans and we have been from before we set up Surrey.
- [41:59]
Giv
Yeah, I was a training or a course early on. I was saying that and that, and I was saying earlier that there's a lot of insights that I think helped us go after this product category.
- [42:09]
Mark
But, like, probably like a lot of your listeners, like, we're like, we want to set up a business, we want to be successful. Like, what would our dream be? And one of them as well is fast company. Like, you know, looking at the most innovative companies. Like, I would scour that list and, you know, be like, wow, imagine one day like, you know, like really being in amongst these, these other companies. And so before we even set up a business, like the business, we wrote down a list of, wouldn't it be great if we could do this and that and, and it's bizarre because, you know, fast company, most innovative list would definitely be one of them. You know, being on the founder podcast would have been one of them. And it's just amazing. Like, now that I look back on, I wish I'd written other things like, you know.
- [42:47]
Giv
Yeah, because they keep coming through, right?
- [42:48]
Mark
Yeah, they keep coming true. So I'm like, I probably should have like, gone a bit more ambitious. But another one just we got this week was there's this, this very famous list in the UK about the top 100 best companies to work for, like, you know, in terms of like culture and environment. And that was, that was fun. And listen, and you know, we're on that list now and it just, it's amazing how even, just like thinking about these things in advance, like this like, visualization, this kind of like intent of like, this is where we want to go, writing it down, how these things are coming true. You know, like even the fact that we're having this conversation right now at some level, we discussed what, like, five or six years ago?
- [43:28]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, it's crazy and it's really impressive, right? Like the speed in which you guys are growing the business. And I think a lot of it comes down to, like, the product, the execution, the brand. You've done such a fantastic job and I think you've spent the time, right, like you, like, not many people go through 5,000 customer interviews or, you know, customer data points, right? And there is a common thread that I see among super successful founders that we interview. They spend the time getting the product right and really nailing the product and then they nail the branding and the packaging and Then obviously the marketing as well. But the marketing becomes so much easier if you've got product market fit. And that's, I think, what a lot of founders tend to skip over. They've got the idea, they want to launch it, and they don't spend enough time on really thinking about the problem that they're solving and, and how to really differentiate in the marketplace. And it's tough. You know, that's why Founder exists. Right. Like, we connect you with some of the greatest entrepreneurs of our generation, either through, you know, free content, podcasts, or our education platforms and all sorts of things. But like, it's not easy, right?
- [44:52]
Giv
No, I mean, there's a lot of, I mean we've, we've been fortunate to talk about the good moments and, and our, and our wish list coming through, but there are definitely lows and I would, I would just add and you know, a lot of work, you know, a lot of sacrifices made. We both have young kids and Mark said he's not cool, but we have no personal life. Like, we don't, we don't get, I mean, we get to go out to the occasional business event, I think, but like friends wise, like, yeah, we, I'm terrible on WhatsApp, like, terrible getting back to people, terrible on email, but like, I would say, like, we really enjoy it. Right. So these are, these are trade offs that we made that we massively enjoy. But it's hard. Hardware is hard. I wish I, there's so many things I wish I could tell myself when we were starting out. Like launching a product that is physical is very hard compared to. Well, everything's hard. But you know, you have the capital, you have products, you constantly have to evolve the product and constantly make it better behind the scenes and not tell people about it because things need to change and, and you don't get it right in the first batch or the second or the third. So that, that is, that is definitely something that I wish I knew when I was starting. Maybe better I didn't know. Right, because you have, you're just going to be continually learning, failing and learning at the same time.
- [46:07]
Mark
The thing you said though, Nathan, is like, I think it's been probably my biggest lesson. I had a business before this and it felt every single day like I was pushing a rock up a hill. I fought for every single pound of profit in that business. You know, it was just like at no point did it get easier. Whereas this time, because we did that upfront research and because it was really based on genuine consumer insights with a Within a very large category, that product market fit just totally changes the game, as you said. And getting that product right, that customer experience right is, is so fundamental. And I think often I meet other entrepreneurs and I think, think, wow, you are such a better business person than I am. But they might be working with an undifferentiated product or in a category that really has no growth or requires a lot of like expensive education. And it's just so much harder than if you find, you know, like a large problem and, and solve it with a great solution and then bring that to market.
- [47:12]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, I agree. Talk to me around kind of like what are some other mindset shifts or things that you think founders need to know that is not talked about enough when it comes to starting or even just scaling an E comm brand at the speed in which you guys are growing?
- [47:30]
Giv
Yeah, I mean, I would say like one thing for me is don't, don't be a perfectionist in the beginning. Like, we were so nervous about our branding in the beginning, you know, now we're very happy with it, but we, it wasn't perfect. And if you go onto our Instagram, we've left all of those posts early on, so you can really see how we've evolved. But we were, you know, in the beginning, you, you really want to create. It's your baby. You want to create something perfect. And sometimes you really over you, you waste stress on perfection, on certain elements. I now it's, it's. We're saying that the product needs to be perfect, right? But what I'm saying is like as a founder, you're constantly going the 110% and sometimes you need to accept that things will evolve over time. And so you're going to make, give it your best effort now, but you've got to be continually willing to evolve it. And I think branding is a good example of that. So we were constantly evolving our branding in the beginning because sometimes you might need to hire the right branding person and you can't at the start, you know, so you have to wait until you can evolve things. So accepting imperfection on, on branding, I would say is, is something that, that I would encourage. You know, that not everything's going to be perfect. Get it, but get it right. But I think the key point there is don't just accept it. Accept that you're going to continually improve it and that's the goal. Like, don't say, well, it's not perfect, but it's good enough. Be like, tomorrow I'm going to make it better next week, even better. But I'm just going to do what I can do and keep improving from.
- [48:58]
Mark
My side as well. I think there's some solid foundational truth which if you follow as an early stage founder, it's just going to set you in great step. There's a guy called Drew Sanaki who again on LinkedIn, he, he's turned around these massive E commerce companies and now he runs I think post pilot. But like the following is true in E commerce, like try and have as high a gross margin as possible. If you, if you can start your brand and it's got you know, 70s, 80s high gross margin, like that's going to be fundamentally useful too. If you have a small and, or light product that's really good from like a shipping posting, packaging, storage, like it is just such a fundamental truth. And like the, the best example I can think of this is there's a brand in the UK called Lounge and I've read the interview as the husband wife, partnership. I think they were boyfriend girlfriend at the time and they took that same advice and they were like what can we do? And they made women's underwear, right? So you think about that stuff. It's, it's so like the stuff they produce is very small, super light and it's unbelievable margins, you know what I mean? It's like this like bit of fabric, this size but huge margins and they have scaled this company profitably into the hundreds of millions and you know, again it's sort of for an E commerce founder if you can find something that's like small, light, durable, doesn't, doesn't go out of date, has great margins and is based on like a fake. You know, there's a big addressable market and you've got a differentiated product. I think if you get those fundamentals right from the beginning, you make your whole life easier in the long run.
- [50:47]
Giv
The, the, the one other sort of like controversial thing that I really want to share is that early on when we were starting as a founder in general, you're constantly seeking advice. Like you're constantly looking to people who've done it, you're constantly looking to your investors, you're seeking what, what do you guys think we should do? And you're, you're, you're ingesting that and sometimes you're taking it personally if they're not happy with something. And I would say one of the best. I asked an early stage investor who passed on us, I said what do you think of the product? What do you Think of the concept. Like, would you invest? And. And he was like, what do you mean, what do I think of the concept? I was like, what do you think of the concept? And he was like, you don't want my opinion. I'm just an investor. You, what you want is your consumer's opinion. And if your consumer likes it, they'll reward you with a share of wallet. But like me telling you what I think, like, I'm a millionaire, like, I'm. I'm probably not your customer. Like, ask your customers, don't ask me what they think. And I was like, you're totally right. And I was at a stage when I had a lot of people sharing suggestions and feedback, and I was trying to ingest it all with Mario. I was like, what should we do? This should we know? And the reality is sometimes there's, there's a lot of. There's a level of advice that becomes noise. And so seek the advice you need, but always be willing to sort of of take what you want and leave what you don't. Right. Because you don't need to take something that you don't think will work on your business and maybe your customers haven't told you about. So always be willing to sort of leave what you don't need at the door.
- [52:06]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, I agree with that. You gotta be careful, right? Like, I often talk about this thing called situational stage advice. Like, I never forget a mentor of mine. I used to, you know, love Gary Vee and he used to say, you know, he responds to every single Instagram comment. And I said to mentor mine, oh, look, you know, I need to build a stronger relationship with our community at founder. We need to respond, responding to everyone, you know, thousands and thousands of comments every week on our Instagram. And he's like, he just laughed and he's like, Nathan, the reason that Gary Vee has the time to do that is because he has $100 million a year company and he has, you know, 500 plus employees. Like, it's not relevant to you. And I think it's so easy, you know, to speak to somebody or see something online and then go, oh, that means that's what I have to do. And like you said, you got to take what's relevant to you and discard the rest completely.
- [52:57]
Giv
100% love that example.
- [52:59]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. Okay, so look, we have to work towards wrapping up. This has been awesome interview. Guys have been really candid and open around what it takes to build like a super fast growing company. You guys must be, you know, One of the fastest growing brands in the uk, right. Like, like, like it's insane growth. I'm curious, if you could give your 25 year old selves one piece of advice, what would it be?
- [53:26]
Mark
You should set up Surrey right now and do this before you have kids and like just start sooner. Like, like I wish we'd had the sort of concept and wherewithal to do it. That would be my advice probably. That being said, you know, like going through the journey that we went from 25 to when we set up the business has actually prob being foundational. Truthfully, you know, it's like, like would I be the same person that I was like starting Surrey now if I hadn't gone through like the ups and downs of my previous company? Probably not. So I guess that's, I totally agree with that.
- [54:05]
Giv
I would say, I mean not to be cheated. I say don't stop being curious. You know one my younger self I, I wanted to be an entrepreneur since I was 10 years old and, and I never really took that path. I worked at big corporate companies. I was worried I was getting too old to be an entrepreneur. I, you know I moved to a large, a few other large companies and then finally I applied to a lot of startups and they said oh you're overqualified and you're overpaid. They're right about the overpaid part, not the overqualified part. I can roll up my sleeves and do anything. And I just, and I, and then I moved to a venture company where I got firsthand experience on companies that were not growing as well and trying to turn around. And I would say that path looking back now has been the perfect path for us to set up Suri because I learned about companies that weren't doing well. I learned the product market fit wasn't good. I learned the fundamentals of like marketing and finance at a larger stage company which now as we move bigger and we need more pro, we get bigger, need more processes, those skills really come into play and so I would say chill out, be curious, continue be curious because like there's always, I had this like burning desire of like why have I not done it now? What am I going to do it? We talked about the idea eight years ago, what's going on. So yeah, I think things work out sometimes when you're, when you're, you keep stick true to your values.
- [55:20]
Nathan Chan
I agree. And I've got one last question for you both. What's one question that you wanted me to ask you that perhaps I Haven't.
- [55:29]
Giv
My question was that I wanted you to ask me was like, what is the most important thing you tell any founder about starting a business? And my answer would be, enjoy the journey, because you are going to have downtimes that are just painful to get through, and you just got to get through them, and then you're going to have the most epic uptimes. And I was maybe superstitious. I just didn't want to celebrate the wins even when they're small or big. And early on, Mark was like, we're never going to enjoy this journey if we aren't like, absolutely celebrating at our hardest at any moment possible. And he's great at bringing our team on, having just an amazing culture. But that is so true. And we've done that. And I was like, you're right. I'm just going to self the whole way through, through and just be like, really modest about it. So I would say, like, enjoying the journey. Any moment to celebrate is an epic moment to celebrate. Take it and, you know, celebrate even harder because those downtimes are really hard for any founder. And there's a lot of mental sort of struggle that you go through and. And it's important to have that balance and to get out of that. I mean, I listened to a lot of podcasts and I know that's a common theme that you. You. That is shared on yours. And also, so the founder of Shopify, Tobias Lutke, says, like, his company has done so well. It's on a stock market, right? And he's well from any struggles now, but he says, I still get those low moments. He's like, I've just learned to minimize them to five minutes, and then I'm moving on to the next thing. So I think it never goes away as a founder. So you've just got to learn to celebrate the highs and pull yourself out of the low moments when they come.
- [56:58]
Mark
And I'll tell you where that came from, because this is like, it. You're actually so right. It's so fundamental. In my last business, everything that I was built towards was like, the exit, right? And I, like, I was so focused on the exit, and it meant everything to me and my identity and my ego and my value as a person was like, how much do I exit for? Like, can I achieve it? Et cetera, to the detriment of the journey. And it's such a cliche. And like, you know, I'd obviously heard many people be like, it's about the journey. It's not about the Destination. And I was like, yeah, yeah, whatever. You can say that because you're already got your millions, whatever. But, like, like, at the end, when I exited my last company, I. I had, like, real burnout to the point of just, like, existential, like, what was this all for? Like, what. Why have I done this? And it was in my lowest moment post exit that I was like, I will never do that again. Because if you just look at, like, the amount of time, like, you know, we. We've been doing this now three years, I genuinely can say, like, it's just been the best three years of my life because I'm so much more present and then just trying to enjoy the journey. And, like, because of that, no matter what happens at, like, the end, if we have this incredible exit or if we don't, I. I can genuinely say there is not a single thing I would do differently in terms of how I've spent those three years. And if I can live my life for the rest of time just being, like, enjoying each day, enjoying each week. Obviously there's highs and lows, but, like, really just, like. Like, there's nothing I'd rather be doing. And that, for me, is now success. And I think I'm so glad we get to share that together.
- [58:32]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, that's a. That's a really amazing thing to share. So. And I agree. It's easy to forget, though, right? It's easy. It's. It's not. It's not easy to remember. It's easy to get because you just caught up, right? It's like this crazy thing. But, guys, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Really, really valuable for all of our listeners, and I look forward to continuing to watch the journey from afar as you really scale this incredible brand.
- [58:59]
Mark
Thank you.
- [59:00]
Giv
Thank you so much.
- [59:01]
Nathan Chan
All right, so if you love this episode, make sure to check out my interview with Alex Hormozi on how he scales companies from zero straight to $2 million a month in less than a year.
- [59:12]
Mark
You were like, Hob. YouTube, YouTuber. Like, there's five years of my life that disappeared. In fact, I lost all the money, which I talk about in the book. I. I had all the gyms, I did the turnarounds, and then I had $0 five years later because of mistakes that I made. But the things that I was gaining was not the money. It was the skills. It was the character traits and the beliefs.