← The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
667: He Built a $300M Men's Grooming Brand in JUST Three Years | MANSCAPED
00:48:05
Paul Tran started Manscaped with $50,000, a bloody problem nobody was talking about, and a category that didn't exist. The company hit $300 million in revenue in just 36 months, eventually turned down a $1 billion SPAC deal, and has become the #3 men's grooming brand in a category dominated by companies over 100 years old—while staying profitable the entire way.
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A
Hey, founder fam. Before we jump in, I want to take a quick moment to talk about our sponsor, OmniSend, the email marketing and SMS platform built specifically for e commerce founders. We've been recommending Omnisend to founder, students and members of our platform for a while now because it just works. So whether you're launching your first store or you're scaling it to seven figures, it really helps you automate your marketing and get results. And did you know on average OMNISEND customers make $79 for every $1 they spend, which insanely good return on investment. And if you're already on another platform, here's the thing. In just five days you could actually be paying 35% less without doing an absolute thing. Omnisend will move every flow across list and template. You just show up when it's done. And finally, because you're part of the founder community, you get 50% off your first three months with the code FOUNDER50. Just head to omnisend.com founder and that's found without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump in the show from zero to $300 million in 36 months. Shaving your stinky man bits. That's today's guest, Paul Tran, who's the founder of Manscape, the brand that single handedly created the men's below the belt grooming category. What started as a bloody mess with the wrong trimmer became a global DTC powerhouse, outgrowing a century old industry and even walking away from a billion dollar merger along the way. This is an incredible conversation where Paul's going to break down the exact playbook behind one of the most remarkable D2C scale recent history. Hear the stories, learn the proven methods
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B
and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship.
- [01:44]
A
Welcome to the Founder podcast with Nathan Chan. From 0 to 300 million in 36 months. What was the exact moment where you saw a massive, unaddressed white space space in men's grooming and you're like, we're going to launch Manscaped.
- [02:06]
B
Well, Nate, thanks for having me on this podcast. It's going to be really cool to talk to you guys today. The catalyst. So way back, eight years now. Gosh, that's a long time. I had, I had started three companies that same year. Manscape was one of them. And Manscape really was spawned out of a need and it was really just, gosh, I'm gonna be blunt, a bloody mess, you know, getting, getting nicked. And at, at that time there was, there was no brand that represented male Growing care, you know, like there was, there was no brand. Now when you think about male growing care, you, you, you can't help but think about manscape because we just define that category now. We absolutely own the mind share of men for that area of the body. And so not to be too graphic for the guys listening for the ladies, this is a real pain point for men. There were beard trimmers, there were hair clippers, but there was nothing designed specifically for the groin. So we set out and, and after that bloody mess, I was just thinking, you know, there's, there's got to be a, there's, there's, there's going to be a better way. I hate, I hate to, I hate to say, I hate to say that, but I guess all entrepreneurs have that, that, that epiphany. You know, it, and it was, it was a hypothesis, you know, are, are guys doing this and not talking about it or, or the end. These big conglomerates were just ignoring this category. Or, or was there no market at all? Nobody, nobody was, nobody was, nobody cared. Nobody was doing it. So we set off and we wanted to create a really good groin trimmer for men that was number one, very safe. So you know, our skin safe technology that we wrapped around our ceramic blade technology was the cornerstone of, of our technology and our trimmers so started with a kind of a whimsical play on words. We called it the Lawn Mower. I started with the Lawnmower 1.0. And from the very beginning we knew that we didn't want to just be a hardware business, we wanted to be a men's lifestyle business. So from day one, we really didn't have any sales. We had this long term vision of being a men's lifestyle business and taking care of men. Like a brand that defines masculinity for men. So when we launched our first product, it wasn't just a trimmer, it was an entire kit to take care of your groin. And this included like really, now that you look at it, really funny and witty things. And we thought through the entire process, we like, we had a mat, we called it the Magic mat. And it was like a newspaper that we wrote with really whimsical and witty articles that you can, that you could actually sit down and read and be really, and be entertained by it. You know, it had graphic, it had graphics on how to, for you to, you know, mow a landing strip. It was just really funny. But it allowed, it had a utility too. It allowed you to groom, you know, cover everything up and throw it out. So from day one, we knew that we wanted to package everything and make it really easy for men. So that's kind of how we. That's kind of how we started. And it was from an entrepreneur side perspective, if we're talking about strictly the business and not just the product, you know, we brought in, I think it was 10,000 units. And we're like, we're experimenting. This is back in the early days. This is back when we were starting to bring in units. It was like probably eight years ago. And it was all platforms. It was at that time Facebook. Facebook hadn't changed its name to Meta yet. So it was platforms scaling platforms. Facebook, Google, YouTube. In that heyday, in that time frame, ads were still really reasonable. Ad rates are just incredibly expensive now. And we brought in the 10,000 units and we kind of struck a chord. So of the three businesses that I started that year, Manscape had the lowest revenue, but we felt it had the highest potential and it just scaled massively from there.
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A
Yeah. So I'd like to explore that. So the three businesses, you said that it had the lowest revenue but the highest potential. Like, what did that look like? And can you give us some comparisons or any specifics there?
- [07:19]
B
Yeah, yeah, great question. That's. So the two other businesses had higher revenue, but there was a sense that there was something special with Manscape. And here were the indicators, indicators for us. When I would read the comments on our Facebook ads and people were really excited just reading, just reading the comments. So that was a really. That was a big indicator. The second one was we would be like a. We would shoot up in revenue and then be dark for two or three months as we get in new inventory. So we bring in 10,000 units and it would sell out two weeks, and then we're dark, and then we would have to wait for the next set of inventory, then we'd sell out, then we go dark again. So the volume of products that we were able to sell was another really, really important indicator that this was striking a chord. And then kind of the last one was just the. Everyone that was working on Manscape was just so, so excited about it. So with. With those. With those insights, it gave me the confidence that we have to lean into Manscape.
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A
Interesting. And so to do Your first run, 10,000 units, how did you. How did you find the manufacturer? How did you. Did you have to raise any money to. To fund that first moq? Like, talk us through that piece of the puz. You know, you launched a kit. Many, many founders now they launch with perhaps one hero product. You, you know, you, you launch with a kit. Great for AOVs early days, great for, you know, unit economics with Facebook ads. But, you know, that's the stuff that people are starting to work out and go really hard on now. Right. But yeah, back then you could launch a product and you could have a $40 AOV and still be profitable. Now that's very difficult. Right?
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B
Very difficult.
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A
Yeah. So talk us through that.
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B
Yeah. So back then ad testing was king. You couldn't iterate through ads as quickly as you can now because with AI, with, you know, back then you still had smartphones, but you didn't really shoot real content on smartphone. We still shot, if you want to shoot high quality content, it was still on DSLRs and you're still editing. It's so easy to edit videos and content now. And there wasn't as much noise in the market, but you know, it's just there wasn't as many brands trying to capture the consumer's attention. So when we launched, it was all about how do we achieve the lowest CAC. And at one time our CAC was like $23 for an $89 AOV product. And that was once again because we struck a chord. We started building a community. And of course those days are gone. Our CAC is higher than that now. But it was all about performance media and I don't know the cohort of the audience. So I'm going to just kind of take a step back. There's performance media, there's brand media. Performance media drives a sale, Brand media builds your brand. And I'll give you a funny story. So on Facebook there's this toggle, right? Or the Meta platform, there's this toggle. Where do you want to drive for conversions or do you want to drive for reach? Right? And any advertiser in the digital space will know that you never switch that toggle over to reach because it will spend your money so fast and not get you any conversions that your head will spin. So very early days, I remember getting a call from at that time, our head of media, his name is Ryan and he's like, paul, dude, I, I just spent $18,000 and it was just like, just like that. It was literally in the span of an hour. And I'm like, wait, what, like how, how many. What, what did we drive and in for, you know, for the 18 grand is like, we, we didn't drive any sales. We, we hit that reach button. I, I didn't realize I hit the Reach button. And it was a shock because at that time, $18,000, you know, losing $18,000 was a big deal because we. We literally started the business with $50,000. Right. And so it was the inventory cycle, and it was. Because we were digitally native, it was all D2C. You can recoup that cash very quickly. Now we're Omnichannel, so, you know, we have Target, Walmart, Best Buy. Those are on net 30, net 60, net. So the cash cycle is very different now. But back then, you can recoup the cash very quickly and put it back into inventory. But $18,000 is a big hit. Right. And I'm talking through the evolution of how we market. We actually spend money. We actually flip it to reach these days. So as we build out our campaign and our marketing strategy, there are campaigns that are focused on conversions. And believe it or not, there are campaigns that focus on reach, where we just want to drive brand and drive eyeballs and awareness and tell our story. And that's top of funnel marketing. And that's a good example of the Super Bowl. When you run a Super bowl commercial, you're not expecting to drive conversions. You're expecting to drive brand and awareness.
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A
Yeah. So when did you guys start raising money? So you scaled pretty quickly. Like, that's crazy. 0 to 300 million in 36 months. You raised 23 million along the way. When did you start raising money?
- [13:44]
B
I think it was. Well, we started raising money. I can't. I can't remember exactly when, but I do know that number, that it only took us 23 million to get to 300 million in revenue. And the fundraising cycle for us was it wasn't just a. Here's a chunk of 23. It was friends and family along the way. And as the business scale, we were funding additional inventory. There was a pivotal moment that we knew that we wanted to hold off on going into retail until we were ready. And for us, what defined ready was we wanted to be, I think, 50, 60 million in marketing spend to drive awareness through. At that time, it was really just D2C. Amazon had just activated. So we wanted to make sure that we can drive door swings for our retailers. That's one of the things that I think hurts a lot of small companies, that they go into retail when they're not ready and the product sits on the shelf. And what ends up happening is you have markdowns, and if it doesn't sell, the retailer either destroys it or sends it back to you. It's not. It's not A desirable outcome. So we were really careful before we entered retail and we wanted to make sure that when we did, our first partner was Target. Now we have many retailers, including Walmart is a wonderful partner of ours, Best Buy, cvs, and not to mention all the international retailers. But if your listeners are listening, retail is an amazing vehicle. Just make sure you have the right strategy for retail. And many digitally native startups don't necessarily have that strategy or that expertise in house.
- [15:58]
A
Yeah. So a question that has come up in our community that I do see that is common is you have traction, you've got, you know, you're doing well with the brand, you might be doing seven, multiple seven figures. You've got a big retailer opportunity, you want to jump at it because you're worried that competitors might get in before you. And I'm sure you, you know, you guys experience this too, right? You've got a great brand. You built that white spot like it was white space. You built out this blue ocean. But then copycats come, you know, 50, 60 million in annual media spend. That is crazy scale. At what point should a brand know when to go into retail? Like, because, yeah, 50, 60 million annual spend, like, that's crazy.
- [16:49]
B
I think it depends on the product and the category. I'll. I'll speak about us in our category and then I'll speak in, in general. So for us, our competitors are centurions. They've been around for over a century. If you think about our competitors, they've been around for over 100 years. Most of our competitors have been around for over 100 years. So they're very established, they're very entrenched. So it was really important for us to, to define really who we are, what we stand for, to the new audience, to capture this younger audience. If you talk to your dad, he'll know of our competitors. But if you talk to a younger male audience now, it's literally down to 18 to 45, even 55. They all know manscape. And so that was the audience that we wanted to capture. So it was important to us that we felt confident that we had really great brand awareness and connection with our audience before we went into retail. So there's no way to really peg a number on it. You can't peg a number on it. And definitely retail can help you grow and build brand awareness because our partnership with all of our retailers is phenomenal. We have signage, the brand is prominent in the store, so all that helps the brand. But just. I'm going to go back, just be careful and mindful that you have to drive, sell through for your retail partners. It's not a one way thing where you sell into retail and you expect them to just sell for you. So that's on our side in general, depends on the category. If you're food and beverage shipping water is really expensive and the margins there don't support D2C, you're never going to be profitable. Your CAC is never going to make sense as a D2C business. You might have a very small business, very niche, but I'll never be able to scale without retail. So it kind of depends on the, not kind of. It very much depends on the business if retail is the catalyst for your growth and scale.
- [19:25]
A
So I would say DTC native seven figures, multiple seven figures, you're doing well. You've got a big retailer opportunity. You're worried about competitors perhaps coming in and getting in before you. You, you know, you've got a niche product like yourself, there are copycats starting to come up. You want to be that first in that big retailer. How do you still know?
- [19:54]
B
Okay, that's a complicated question. Let me, let me try to tackle that because it's a very specific, my answer be very specific to the, to the brand, the product. But I'll try to be as general as, as, as I can going. If you're a seven figure business and you're, you're contemplating going into retail, you have to ask yourself, is it niche enough that you're going, is it? Okay, let me rewind. Is it, is it niche enough and will it stand out on the shelf? Here's what, here's what I mean by that. If it's, if it's too niche and you're not able to get it to stand out on the shelf, nobody's going to recognize it, right? That's the challenge, right? Because I don't know, I want to make, I'll make something up. Almond water, cashew water, right? You got some amazing cashew water. That's whatever making this, I'm making this up guys. So just don't go out there and make cashew water and it tastes amazing. But nobody knows what cashew water is or how it tastes or how it should taste, right? And if that's, if sitting on, if it's sitting on the shelf and you can't tell your story with it, with the packaging and the design of the packaging, it's going to sit there, it's going to be really hard to move. A good example is liquid death. They sell water in a Can. Right. They spend a tremendous amount of energy and capital branding, telling their story. Right. And creating followers and a community around it. They know that their distribution is through retail because once again, shipping water is. You just can't make money shipping water. So they know that their eventual distribution channel is retail. But you kind of heard of liquid death outside of the retail channel, right? It's not like you walked down the aisle, you saw liquid death for the first time. You're like, hmm, I'm going to pick up a can of liquid death because it has skulls on it. And I. And I know that it's selling water. There's water in that can. Right? You already followed the brand. You like the brand, and you know that there's water in that can. That's why you pick it up.
- [22:10]
A
Yeah, got you. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. So let's go back to the spend, because that's really interesting. You guys spend nine figures annually on. On media, and you have to walk a very fine line, like you said, between brand and performance. And you have to be edgy enough to, you know, destigmatize male grooming without crossing into territory that. That alienates or offends. So what was the exact testing strategy that led to the viral success of ads like the Singing Hairball Monsters super bowl spot? Use a lot of humor in ads. I think it's very clever. Talk us through that.
- [22:52]
B
Well, we never wanted to be. And I'll give you an interesting story. Also on Walking this Thin Line, you know, if you think of your favorite comedian, right. Comedians are really good at this. You kind of have to be. You have to be edgy, but you also can't cross a line. Because you cross a line, you get canceled. And it's really hard. It's very difficult to walk that line and at the same time appeal to a mass audience. So the way that we look at it is we want it to be witty. And of course, there's humor in everything that we do, but it's witty humor. It's not slapstick humor. It's not. It's not vulgar humor. So very early on, and this was, for us, we firmly believe, very early on, as you know, our core product started as a growing tremor, but now we've expanded way beyond that. We have head shavers, beard shavers. We take care of men from head to toe. I mean, everything that you can think of, including skincare. But in the early days, it was the groin. And if you think about it, one of the things that you must test is women Marketing your product. So of course we tested women marketing our product, influencers marketing our product. And of course what sells provocative images of women get clicks. Right. And as you know, the more clicks you get, the more people get to your website, the more people will convert and better cac. We saw that, we saw that in our data. When we worked with influencers that were women influencers that were more provocative, it drove better and higher sales. We made a decision internally that we were not going to do that and that that was a firm decision within the company that we didn't want to have that kind of marketing. We wanted to stick with the focus of empowering men, not showing provocative pictures of women to sell our product. And that was a key, a key moment for us because I, I think that if we, if we went down that path, sure, we would have made more money at that time, we would have drive driven better cacs, but it's not, it wasn't who we wanted to be.
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A
So you talked about bundling and kits when you first started and we talked about, you know, your, you know, your initial average order value being $89. So that's really solid. Right. And your business, you know, maintains a 4% site convers for founders that are listening to this. What specific bundle structures or pricing tests led to 66% of first time buyers choosing a starter set. Because that's incredible for, for a CAC, for, for a CAC to LTV, even, even just a 30 day, like that's, that's amazing. And then you've got subscription on the back end and all of these other parts of your ecosystem. From an economic standpoint, it makes sense how you were able to scale.
- [26:26]
B
Yeah. So I'm taking you back now. This is three, four, five years ago when we were still very DTC prominent and DTC heavy. Now we're omnichannel. So it's a very different business now than when it was, when we were much smaller. So when we're talking about CAC bundling and kits, I would say it's value. If you're trying to bundle, the reason that you bundle is so your customers gets a better value. Right. And with that value, you're driving a lower CAC and higher conversion. Right. So if I were to guide the listeners, if you're trying to test what, how you're trying to test your CAC versus ltv and you're looking to bundle, test many different bundles, but really understand what those customers want and the value that they associate to that bundle because that's where you're going to hit the right CAC metric versus the right aov, because ultimately that's what you're trying to do. Right. And especially if you have a consumable. Right. Because we have consumables. So you buy a kit, it'll come with a body wash and our chairman or our beard trimmer, whatever that is in our kits, our shaving cream or power shave cream or beard oil. And that's a replenishment. We want you to try that because we know that you'll love it. And then you'll come back and you'll either buy online or you'll buy an Amazon and you'll buy at retail.
- [28:21]
A
Yeah. So when it comes to, I guess, post purchase upsells down sells, all of that good stuff, what advice do you have for founders there? We've got, we've talked about bundling, but also just on the kind of maximizing aov, is there any tips, tricks, hints or tests that you've ran that could be really helpful?
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B
Oh, yeah. I think it comes back to, once again, value for your customers. And I want your listeners to think of value as value to you and value to the customer. And this is what I mean by that. When I say value to you. It's expensive to drive someone to your website and expensive to drive that conversion. Right. So when they're there, you want to present them with the greatest value that you deem for that session. Right. That cart. So if you're thinking about upsells, there's multiple ways to upsell upsell within the cart. Post purchase upsell, you can hit one more time with an email upsell to add things to the cart. But once again, that comes back to value to the customer and value to you. Right. How much are you willing to get them to add something into their cart? Because it drives up the incremental AOV while balancing the value to the customer. So once you figure out that balance, that's the right state to be in.
- [29:56]
A
Yeah. Because the reason I ask that question is you guys are clearly incredible marketers and you clearly worked it out pretty early on. But one common thing that I see amongst founders is they don't have post purchase. One click up sales in place and they're leaving, you know, an extra 5 or even 10, 15, 15, $20 sometimes depending on the price point in increasing average order value depending on the offer, which is crazy. Like that's the difference between being profitable on first purchase and not in some cases.
- [30:25]
B
Oh, absolutely. You're absolutely right, Nate. That, that is. And these Days. It's so easy. You install a Shopify app, everyone's on Shopify. If you're on BigCommerce, I don't know what you're doing. You know, you're. And you're still in Magento. I don't know what you're doing. It's. Everyone's on Shopify now. It's a Shopify app and you literally just add in and you're up and running.
- [30:43]
A
Yeah, it's crazy. So I'd like to talk about. We talked about this offline. You said that if you were to start a brand now, it would be very different to when you started, you know, seven, eight years ago. You would do things very, very, very differently. And you guys are at a very different phase compared to, to most of our listeners, right? So most of our listeners are early stage, recently hit product market fit, or in a scale phase, but not the level of scale where you guys are at multiple nine figures, you know, nine figures in annual media spend. Like that's, that's very, very large. So what would you do differently? The landscape has definitely changed. And what is. Do you have any kind of controversial takes or things that you would do differently you'd like to share?
- [31:32]
B
I think we're. I think. Well, so if you just look at the landscape over the last eight years, right? Media, what does it mean? Media has gone much more expensive, Right. There's much more competition in the space. It's much easier to put up a brand these days, right? Literally, you can tell Claude to put up a website. And remember, keep in mind, back in the day, I'm sitting there cutting up Photoshop files to code a Shopify theme. Now, literally, Claude can do that for you in 15 minutes. So if you know that it's really easy to create a product, it's really easy to set up an E commerce site, it's really easy to create ads through AI. Then what is your advantage? What do you need to do to outpace your competitors? And I think that, number one, you really got to understand AI and how to utilize those tools. So if I were to do it again, I'd streamline the workflow to iterate and test much faster. Just because the tools are there to be able to do that. We thought that when we were iterating and testing that at that time we were so fast already. It was daily turnaround because I had my background software. So we would design the sites, let's design the landing page. And it would be sent offshore to be coded the next day. We have A new landing page that we're testing. Now, you don't have to do any of that. And now even there are AI software out there that will help you iterate through all of your testing. So testing your landing page and your funnel can be so easy. And you really don't need to have a team of 10, you know, I'm exaggerating, maybe a team of five to do that, right? You can literally do it, one or two, one or two people sitting in a room and iterate through ads and find the right landing page, the right offer, the right ads, and see if you get, if you can achieve product market fit or not, then you're getting to scale. Now, as soon as you hit product market fit and you understand who your consumers are, how to speak to them, it's all about scaling, right? So I see startups as, and I have a workflow that goes in my mind on how startups should, especially consumer should be started. You create the product. You make sure your product's really good, right? That's a given. Whether it's food and beverage trimmers, you know, soap, shampoos, whatever that is. You figure out what's, what's differentiated, what's lacking in the market, and you create that product. Then you figure out product market fit. And within product market fit, you're figuring out how to speak to those customers. What do they want to hear? Like for us, early on, our customers wanted to, wanted to have the right tools for the job. That was a really important line for us because they, our men that we serve, wanted to have the right tools for the job. And so we anchored our marketing and our marketing message around that message, right? So that was product market fit and messaging, what to say to those men. And then once you hit that, you're off to the races. It's all about scaling. How do you repeat and rinse that message and reach all that audience until you hit your sam, right? Service addressable market, and then start and then continue to grow and expand from there to achieve the, you know, as. As great of a. Great of a market share as you can with, with your tam.
- [35:13]
A
Yeah. And when it comes to hitting your sam, how did you know when you guys hit it? Like, what did that look like?
- [35:19]
B
It. We, we hit it. Well, we still haven't, we still haven't hit it because every time we hit it, we start growing, right? And I, I'll tell you this, there will be a time where you will saturate the platforms and as you're scaling, that will be faster than you think if you're scaling, what that means is those lookalike campaigns, they don't perform that well anymore. Right. You're targeting. Your CAC starts going up. It starts creeping up every single day. And you don't really realize it because it might be just very little every single day. Your audience, you're saturating your audience. That core bullseye of people that really love your product. You're saturating those people. I'm going to go back to cashew water. People that love cashew water. There's probably 100 of them, and you already got 50 of them. That's when you know that you're starting to hit a friction point. And then you have to start figuring out, okay, what do I need to do? Do I need to go top of funnel? Do I need to diversify my marketing channels? And you need to do that way beyond, just way beyond hitting that cap. Because once you start hitting that cap and your CAC starts rising, that is a really risky point in the business.
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A
So in November 2021, you know, great scale, businesses booming, you announced a SPAC merger at a $1 billion valuation, and then nine months later, you walked away from that deal entirely. I'd like to explore what led to that decision.
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B
Yeah, so, you know, we, we always wanted to build a really durable and sustainable business, one that is profitable and, and. And is. I'm going to use the word durable again. And I think we've done that with the SPAC process. We wanted to raise capital, but we wanted to make sure that our investors were taken care of. And there was a really small window during that time, and you had to capture. You had to be within that window. We were very close to that window, but we saw that the market was. With the market for SPACs, and the IPO market was just on a decline. The valuations weren't there. And we knew that our investors, because we had investors that were committed, right, they had to fund the deal. We knew that we didn't want to put our investors through that. And so we said we didn't want to continue to do that. That's why we walked away from the deal. And now, looking back three, four years later, we're profitable, we're durable, we're the number three brand in our category. And keep in mind that our competitors are over 100 years old, and we're a little more than eight years old, and we're already number three in the category. We continue to execute on our vision, and that's exciting. I think there is A misconception on a lot of startups. And sometimes it works in tech because the tech industry is all about valuations, raising money and raising money, grow, grow, grow, and then raising your next round. And if you don't raise your next round, you're out of business. It's a very risky, it's a very risky thing. I think in consumer, some, I would say the many consumer startup founders that I have met kind of adopt that way of thinking. I need to raise a lot of money. I don't believe it works that way in consumer. I think you can do a lot with very little in consumer and not take that risk. Because that risk is if you're starting to, if you're burning a ton of cash and you don't raise that next round, you're out of business. It's a zero sum game. You know, it doesn't work. So for us, we never wanted to do that. We wanted to run a very stable business. So when we scaled that quickly, we were still profitable. Right. And that, that's how we want to be. We want to build a durable business, a profitable business. And that's how continue, that's how we continue to guide the business.
- [40:00]
A
Yeah. And look, that's very impressive at the scale that you guys have ran at because usually you have to sacrifice one, right? If you want to scale, you sacrifice profit for growth. And if you've been able to maintain profitability all the way through, that's really impressive. And product development has been something from a hardware perspective where you guys are now, like as an example for lawn mower, you've gone from 1.0, now you're at the 5.0 ultra. Can you guys talk us through how you balance R and D costs of continuous hardware innovation against these economics of basically trying to maintain profitability and all of that good stuff.
- [40:47]
B
Yeah, that's, that's a great question. We're fanaticals, we're just so fanatic about our products. Very excited for a new product launch this year. So all of you that are listening, that are manscaped customers, there's going to be a really exciting product launching this year and I can't wait until it comes out. It's absolutely revolutionary. You've never seen anything like it. It's going to be really awesome. But we, we engineer products to extreme detail, like you, you would. If you look at how we, how we R and D is just. Okay, it first, it first started. I want to, I'm going to take back because I know your audience is small, like they don't have the R and D budget that we do now. But when we first started, it was you as a founder. And I'm talking to you, all of you that are listening. You as a founder, you got to do everything. Like, you can't bitch, right? You got to do everything. You're the marketer, you're the product guy. You're the ops guy. You're everything. I'll bring it back. And I feel your pain because I was there. I was sleeping in the warehouse, setting up label printers so that we can ship our products. You know, there was a Thanksgiving where the entire family, grandparents and everything, were in the warehouse packaging boxes and putting on labels, right? That happened. Okay? It was Thanksgiving. 16,000 orders. And we're sitting there. We're like, what the hell are we going to do? Right? No.
- [42:30]
A
Three plus.
- [42:31]
B
No. We were shipping ourselves at that time. We were shipping ourselves. So gathered up all the friends and family, got towers of pizza, and everyone just pitched in. We had an assembly line, and we got the products out. That's when we're like, okay, we got to move. We got to move to a 3 PL and start. But that was. That's the distinction. That's the difference between raising money or bootstrapping. Because a lot of early founders, you know, they hear the word bootstrapping. What does that really mean? You know, it means getting your ass in the warehouse and packaging boxes. That's what it means. That's bootstrapping. So I have tremendous respect for founders that have bootstrapped, that have grown. And there's always a point where you do need funding because you do want the right advice, the right board members to help you scale and grow the business. But early on, as you're still proving it out, that equity is so valuable, you know, and the hard work really helps you understand the business. So I'll get back to your question, but there was another funny story. There was. Early on, there was a retail order, and, you know, we're like, we're just starting out, so any cash was great. We had a retail order. It was 500,000 units. This was just a test run. Sorry, sorry. I'm sorry. $500,000. It was just a test run, and we didn't have the units in stock. So I called up our factory, and I said, hey, at that time, I think it was like, 80,000 units or something like that. I need 80,000 units, and I need it in a month. And we had amazing relationships with our factory, and they're like, okay, we'll try to get it done, flew there was there like on the assembly line, key weighing the product and there was no way to get it done. Right? No way to get it because you have to put on a boat. It takes like a month to come over here. So I'm like, okay, the product is done, but we got to get it into the distribution center because they can get, so that they can sell it in Q4, they can set the stores in Q4. Had to figure it out. And the way that we figured out was we chartered two 747s to bring our product from Shanghai to, to Long beach. And that's how, you know, just kind of figure it out to get it done. But to answer, but to answer, but to answer your question early on, you are the, the, you are the product person. You are the one that has to figure out the product market fit. So early on, make sure that you invest your time and energy in creating a phenomenal product.
- [45:12]
A
Okay, last question. Yeah, last question before we wrap. Paul. So you've grown manscaped from a niche grooming startup into a comprehensive men's lifestyle brand. You're now moving aggressively into hyper personalization across the entire male body. What is the ultimate milestone for you and exit milestone do you foresee eventually taking the company public when markets stabilize? Talk us through that.
- [45:48]
B
I think we focus on building a long term, durable business. I think we say that to our board, we say that to our investors, we say that to everyone. And we really believe that if you build a long term, durable, profitable business that the exit will come. You know, you build a desirable business. You don't architect a business to be exited, you know, to sell to someone else. I firmly believe that you create a business that is extremely desirable. You get to the EBITDA margins that you say you're going to get to and that's what creates value. And for us, the North Star is to be number one in eight short years. We're now number three in the entire category and we want to be number one. So it's all about growing market share, staying focused, serving our customers. And with that we believe that whether it's the IPO market or, or strategic, a durable, profitable business is what will drive the most value.
- [47:07]
A
Paul, thank you so much for your time. You've been super generous with all of your learnings, experiences and congratulations on all of your success thus far. I look forward to continuing to watch your journey become being a customer. And thank you again.
- [47:23]
B
Thanks so much for having me. Nate. This was, this was really fun and I hope the I hope your listeners got some value out of it.
- [47:29]
A
Yeah, I'm sure they will. Thank you so much.
- [47:31]
B
Thanks so much.
- [47:32]
A
Hey Founder Fam. Thank you so much for tuning in today and if you enjoyed this episode, please take the time to leave us a review and let us know what you think. This podcast is 100% free. We work so hard to go out and find the most successful founders and entrepreneurs all around the globe. So your feedback helps us grow, improve, and even bring on more, more incredible guests and insights. So if you have a second, please take a moment and leave us a review. It really means a lot to me and the founder team. It makes so much of a difference. Thank you again for listening and I'll catch you on the next episode.