Paul (00:00.366)
Welcome, welcome. We are now here for our final and very, very exciting panel. we've touched on a lot of, oh, we covered a lot of grounds. yeah, we've talked quite tactically about actually how brands are showing up, the structure of them, we're talking about affiliates and commercials and jumping onto various things.
But actually this panel is about something which is really a first principle for me. And I particularly love the way, the particular love that people got on stage, which is community. It is a bit of a buzzword. I don't think they anyone who can define it because it means something different to absolutely everyone.
I've beyond even a buzzword. No, but that's how I genuinely feel about that word.
buzzword. No? Okay, we'll do that one. So we've got two incredible leaders here for that. So Nilufar Vahora, is the CMO of Amica, a brand that's redefined what authentic creative collaboration and community led growth look like. And Dr. Brent Ridge, co-founder of Beatman 1802, the brand that turned kindness into an operating system and scaled empathy into a billion dollar business.
The session is about how the real tactics behind human first growth, the systems, the decisions, and yes, the trade-offs it takes to turn values into velocities.
Verity (01:28.938)
Amazing. I was just getting you guys up there. Okay. So like I said, the word community for me, actually annoys me the way a lot of brands use it. And because many few brands actually truly live into it. And I think for you both, you know, there's so much we're going to dig into today. I just want to start off with the very basics. Like when you think about community, what does it actually mean for your brand and where does it start?
I've got
Brent (01:58.222)
Sure, I'll go first. Well, I think for those who don't know B. Communicator 2, I should give you a little bit of context about LeBran, or every answer I say probably during the discussion when it grew since. So we started our company 16 years ago in the midst of the recession. My partner and I have been living in Vickie, your city. My background is in Mildjagny Medicine, and I was working on the story of the lines.
Brent (02:27.758)
that's better. and, we lost our jobs during the recession, had bought this farm property in upstate New York, thinking it would be our weekend getaway. But a neighboring farmer at the time was losing his farm and he had a herd of a hundred goats. And he asked if he could bring his goats to our property to graze, otherwise he would have to sell his animals. And we say that was the original act of kindness that started our company. And when we both lost our jobs, we had to figure out how we were going to pay this million dollar mortgage.
And so we Googled, that's when people still use Google, 16 years ago, what can you make with goat milk? And so the first thing that popped up was goat milk soap. And so we started making bars of soap around our dining room table. And about 16 months into the company, we landed our first big nationwide account with Anthropologie. And they ordered 52,000 bars of this soap. We were a three person company at the time. And so in order to get that,
order out the door, we enlisted the help of every neighbor in our community. They came over to our dining room table and for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for three weeks straight, we hand wrapped every one of those bars of soap. So to this day, we say that there are two key ingredients in everything we make, Goat Milk and kindness. And we say that we grew our company neighbor by neighbor by neighbor.
and we call all of our customers neighbors. We don't have customer service, we have neighbor services. And so when you talk about community, we really look at it in a very old fashioned way is that we are a group of neighbors and we encourage not only the team members in our company culture, but in how we address every single one of our customers to think of them as a neighbor. And by that we mean, think of it as a person that you are going to see every morning when you walk down your driveway.
to check your mail, take out your trash, you're going to physically see that person and interact with them. And that's how we think about community, whether it's online or offline.
Verity (04:28.27)
It's amazing.
I love that Orjus story. I heard your co-founder tell that story last year at Cruder IQ, which I loved. So Amica, for Amica, for those of you who don't know Amica, Amica is a professional haircare brand. We're Brooklyn born, salon raised. We were founded about 16 years ago as well. And really with the simple fact and idea that all hair is welcome.
And so all of our products are tested, formulated for all hair types, textures, and styles, because we believe that inclusivity isn't just a tagline. It's something that needs to be built into the ethos and to every product. And so amica, for those who don't know, the word actually means friend, and in language that was created at the turn of the century called Esperanto.
When we say Amica means friend, it really is just the ethos of the brand and how we think about community as well. Because Amica as a brand, what we think about a lot is that intersection between how do we bring joy and emotion and emotional connection to a professional haircare business. And we were founded by industry outsiders at a time when professional haircare brands were really
talking down to stylists. They were just really saying like, you know, we are the experts and to this day it still continues where it's like the brands were saying we're the experts and we're teaching you. For us who was really standing shoulder to shoulder with stylists and saying to them, you know, you are our partners, we're building a business together, we're building a partnership together and you know, we recognize that you are artists and you know, and haircare really is.
Nilofer (06:19.468)
an emotional journey. an emotional category. Everyone has a hair story. You have a bad hair day, your whole day is ruined. You can't just go and wash off makeup, like, you know, start all over again. And so it really is this emotion and that friendship, you know, for us, community really starts with the stylist and it starts with that vibe of friendship.
I love that. Cause if you think about it as a stylist, if your hairdresser says you should do a thing, you do it. Like, you know, you don't, you don't then sort of like search around and look at other brands and compare prices. You're like, yep, that's the one. But the whole like trust building part of the sales process, you skip for it. And actually for both of you, when was the moment that you realized that this is actually a strategy? Cause it sounds like a lot of this was quite innate.
Thank
Paul (07:05.326)
And then we're all, mean, how many here has people here raise your hands who's got community written anywhere in their strategy for 2025? Yeah, okay, cool. We're hitting the pulse there. You guys have been doing it for 16 years. When was it something where you realized, this is a strategy rather than something you were just innately doing?
I would say for us, it was from day one because it really was like we were at the trade shows with stylists. were, you know, the and again, I wasn't part of the brand back then, but you know, when I hear these stories from, our founder, who's our CEO, Chelsea Riggs, tell these stories, it's truly about, you know, we were the only brand at these professional trade shows that where the stylists could see people looking like them manning the boots.
And so it was truly about inclusivity, making people feel welcome, and obviously really, really high performance hair care that we developed in partnership with our stylist community.
I think, again, for us, community was there from the very beginning, the importance of it. I think when we first realized how powerful it was going to be was we launched on TV retail about five or six years into our company, and we're now the number one skincare brand that crosses QVC and HSN. And we were telling the story about how our neighbors helped us grow this company.
And in the process of telling that story, we said, and you, the audience, you're a neighbor too. And the great thing about TV retail is that people can call in, they can interact with the brand live. This was of course, before really social media kicked off. And we had a neighbor call in, a customer call in, and they said, hi, I'm a neighbor. And from that moment, we just started calling everybody who called in, hi neighbor. We would say that to every person.
Brent (09:07.694)
and
Mr. Rogers.
It's very Mr. Rodriks. We actually did a collaboration with Mr. Rodriks. But we knew it was very, very powerful. Not only from that moment, but within a matter of weeks, we were walking through an airport and someone didn't shout out, it's the Beekman guys or it's Brent and Josh. We heard someone shout, hi, neighbor. And we knew exactly what they were talking about. And still to this day.
Ha!
Brent (09:38.082)
That's when we're walking through an airport or any type of public venue, that's what people will shout out, hi neighbor. It just really resonates with people.
That's amazing. you also did collab there. You also did some collabs with Chitz Creek. Chitz what? Well, they all had a similar sort vibe that gave it a...
Yeah, yeah, we always tried and yes, we always tried to Choose partners and we partner with a meek of before on social media before We choose partners who have a similar ethos that because you know we To the chagrin of our CEO the fabulous Jill Scalamandre My partner and I consider ourselves founders of a kindness company and not founders of a skincare company And we think the ultimate goal for the company that we've created is to put more kindness out into the world
and the way you look at yourself in the mirror, the rituals of self kindness that you have are just part of that journey of helping you put more kindness out into the world.
It's amazing. And Brent's book is in everyone's bag, by way. And it's exactly that. So you can check that out and read it. It's great. it's yellow. It's yellow. yellow. It's on brands. You can't miss it. I mean, this sounds great when you're in a farm wrapping things by hand with your neighbors around the table. You're a much larger brand now. And like, how does this scale kindness?
Paul (11:02.07)
and scale don't necessarily see the things that kind of work together. Like what has changed? Like what sort of segments on those journeys is that how it sort of changed and how you've needed to adapt.
Well, I think we're always pivoting and adapting to this situation, but always thinking where does kindness play a role into that particular pivot? And I'll give an example. When we were getting ready to launch into Ulta Beauty, we were self-financed up for the first 12 years of the company. And so when you get ready to launch into Ulta Beauty, that is a major financial commitment.
millions of dollars in inventory, you're paying for your end caps, you're paying for your fill, you know, scallop your fill team. And we had made all of this pre-investment to go into Ulta the very month that stores shut down from the pandemic. And so we had this millions of dollars of investment. And at that point in time in the pandemic, you had no idea if retail had changed forever or, you know, is this the new normal? We had no idea what we were going to do.
And so we said, okay, when the stores eventually opened like maybe six or eight weeks later and they were allowing a certain number of people to come in at a time, brands couldn't come in, but people could come in. We said, okay, how can we make sure that all of the Ulta associates know that we are a brand that is about goat milk and kindness? And so, you know, we had already budgeted for the founders to go to visit all of these Ulta stores across the country, which we couldn't do. So we said, okay, how can we deploy that?
money in a different way. And so we said, okay, there are lots of small mom and pop bakeries across the country who are at threat of shutting because they have no customers. Why don't we have our team contact these small mom and pop bakeries everywhere that there's an Ulta store where we are launching and let's have them bake dozens and dozens of cookies and hand deliver them to the Ulta stores.
Brent (13:03.938)
with a message that say, here are some cookies to go with your milk. And what was so amazing about that was that, one, that idea of cookies and milk immediately communicated this idea of here's a brand that cares about you and what you're going through, and we're offering you this moment of kindness. But the other amazing thing that it did was it connected these Ulta employees to a small business in their community. And if you think about how disconnected
We are from the small businesses in our own community. Making that connection, particularly during the time of the pandemic, was a really powerful thing. And that one activation really sustained our launch and really is what helped guide us into being one of the top 20 prestige brands at Ulta.
That's incredible. Interesting. like, how do you see the power of the founder brand playing into this? Because I mean, you guys were on QVC, you do TikTok shops, I believe. We do. We do TikTok live, sorry.
We have done a couple. Our team does them.
But the only few, then also the fact that you were going to go out and have those conversations that require high leverage sort of relationship building there as founders. How do you see that plays into community? Is it possible to build community without a person at the heart of it? Cause it does seem that there's these phenomenal brands being built with a founder brand, lease at the core, and then the community is a lot easier to do. Like you've built it from that perspective.
Brent (14:28.566)
Yeah, and I think we had, you know, I had kind of learned a lesson coming from Martha Stewart, understanding what could happen if someone's public persona happened to take a hit, what could happen to the brand. So we were very wary of that from the beginning. And that's one of the reasons that our brand was called Beekman 1802, which is named from the man who built our farm in the year 1802. So we were never meant to be the front people of the brand.
we had the opportunity to go on TV and kind of became the de facto fronts of the brand. and so when we launched in Ulta, yes, we were going to go out and do the founder meet and greets with all the staff. I think not, having an opportunity to do that actually helped set a different course for the company, in not being as dependent upon the founder. because then it wasn't, Brent and Josh are the representations of this brand.
Beacon 1802 is a brand that is about kindness. And so when you go into all the stores, you do not see the founder story. You don't see our pictures. You just see the color yellow. You see kindness everywhere, sensitive skin. So that really did help us not be that, but not to be a shameless plug for Jewel, but when we were trying to build out
our ambassador program, we want to be very clear that we were trying to create a program that wasn't just about selling product, but was about putting more kindness out into the world. And the way we went about doing that was that we had funded some research with an organization called kindness.org, which works with social psychologists from Harvard and Oxford University to look at how kindness shows up in the workforce, in schools, et cetera.
And those scientists had developed the world's first scientifically measured assessment of kindness in cultures. And so it is called the KQ, the kindness quotient. And once we had validated that measurement, we said, could we apply that to an individual level? And the psychologist said, yes, we can make a few tweaks and we can do that. So when we were building, and still today when we're building our ambassador program,
Brent (16:45.534)
every person who enters the program has to take the kindness quotient. So we know exactly where they fall in relation to everywhere else that's in our program. And it doesn't mean that we necessarily exclude you if you have a low score. We just say, you have potential to be kinder. And we really do help them do that. And we also look at comments. The community that they have built, is it a kind community? Is it a
Ha
Brent (17:14.687)
sarcastic communities that are, you so we really look at those types of things to determine who comes into our community. And we actually incentivize and reward our community, not just for talking about product, but also for talking about moments of kindness that appear in their daily lives, either moments of kindness that they do or moments of kindness that have been bestowed upon them. And
the gamification of it is the more that we see them putting kindness out into the world, the more opportunities they get for press kits or for new product launches or special things. So it really is about putting more kindness out into the world. And when we look at the metrics of our kindness crew, yes, of course we're looking on the return on the investment, but we also look at how much
content that they are producing for us. And if we look at the our comp brands, our content creators on average produce about three times more posts than the content producers of other brands. Because they naturally want to talk about kindness and they build their own little micro communities around kindness. And it's turned out to be a very powerful thing.
it.
everybody else want to know how kind they are.
Nilofer (18:39.478)
Yeah, a big
You can go to kindkindness.org and take it yourself if you want.
I'm going to say that next time someone's really aggro in the street, it's just potential to be more kind.
So you mentioned at the start that your community is obviously it's not just about your followers, it's your stylists, your creators, your true brand friends. I'm intrigued to get into the nitty gritty of that and how do you get that into a place where it operates as a repeatable system?
Yeah, it's really interesting. It's fascinating to me because I had previously worked in beauty for consumer brands, but this is kind of a first time for me coming into Amiga to work for a brand that has both the professional side as well as the consumer retail side. And it really is truly a flywheel. And we call it the Amiga effect because, as you said, any time you go to a stylist, it's...
Nilofer (19:31.15)
the stylist is gonna make that recommendation, you're going to take, there's a lot of power there. So what we found is that, you know, it really all started with that kind of stylist moment where they're discovering the brand and, you know, I would say that 80, I think it's like 82 % of our stylists use Amiko for themselves personally. And once they use it for themselves personally, and that's a really big, you know, of credibility driver.
because they're using it, they're discovering Amica, they're using it on themselves, they see that the product works, and then there's this moment in which they're using it on their clients. And when they use it on their clients, with a number one brand, that Stylist recommend to their clients. And so then their clients are gonna take that recommendation and they're going to use the product, discover it. Obviously, our products are, if you don't know, they're just, they're little art. And so we have trademarked artwork on all of our packaging. It's very colorful, it's very bright.
In a sea of minimalism, we are maximalists. We stand out. are truly about celebrating joy and color. And so it's that joyful moment when someone discovers it. Obviously they love our signature scent, which, you know, it just really brings them into that emotional connection back to the brand as well. And then it's about the consumer who then is going to use it on themselves, loves it, and
You know, it's really interesting for us because we, if any time, I've never worked for a brand before where if I go to someone and I tell them that I work for Amica, they don't say, I use this product from Amica or I, you know, I love this product or, you know, or my daughter uses this or my mom uses this. They will say, I love Amica. Yeah. And there's...
You know, there's something really powerful in that statement that someone who has an experience with a product is going to say, I love the brand. And so it's that love that has driven us, despite having probably lower awareness than other top five brands in the market. And we're the number three, number four, I think, given month prestige haircare brand. We, when customers come to us, they go deep and they go broad. So they, we have the number one loyalty, number one promoter score.
Nilofer (21:50.646)
number one in repeat rate. And so people keep coming back over and over and they're going to buy eight to 10 products from us on average. And so that among our target consumer, so that is really powerful in driving this flywheel. And then once they're using and telling all their friends about it, it kind of like becomes a system of self-fulfilling prophecy and we invest into that Amica effect. So all of our partnerships are very much about
our entire marketing strategy and our entire brand strategy is around how do we fuel this system that really came organically through that connection that started with the stylist feeling that connection back to the brand.
Sorry, I thought you were going to say something else. When you came into Amica, what did you have to change in terms of the budget, the process, or even the team set up to get this Amica flywheel going and make it measurable?
Yeah, I I joined last year and I would say the team is phenomenal. Some of them are here and they're great. And we had to grow the team. I mean, we had to grow the team and invest in our team. And that was, you know, we probably had two people working in community who, you know, one of them had been there for like 10 years and so had built the community from scratch. you know, like Brent said, this was, you know, started from, you know, person by
person building that organic community, but if we really wanted to scale it, we needed to invest in our people and to expand our teams. And that was one thing. And then the other was that, you know, small tweaks here and there, but the flywheel existed. It's really about just scaling it and giving that, you know, bringing in some agency partners, you know, thought leaders who can, or consultants who could come in to help support us in
Nilofer (23:42.382)
how we were going to think about that strategy. But I would say that it was also about doubling down and investing in brand equity too. I think so much of if you are a private equity owner owned like we are, or if you answer to a board, a lot of times it's about how do you drive performance? How do you drive those metrics of ROAS and ROI? But I always like to say that at any given moment in time, 95 % of, I think my mic just died.
95 % of consumers are not ready to make that purchase when they see your ad. It's the 5 % who are. If you're going to spend all of your time trying to chase that 5%, it's going to be very expensive for your brand. So what you want to do is to invest in that always on kind of core media, always on media that is going to drive that brand equity at those key moments that, you know, so that when someone is ready to purchase your brand is top of mind. And that's something that
you know, that we had to start to implement when I joined.
How are you? So you're trying to, obviously we're looking at the whole funnel there where you're trying to convert them, but actually going way the way back to the start though, when you said you had the, you've got the, the, the stylists and you've got their customers that are in their chair and you've got this community of IRL people and they're having these conversations IRL. How are you taking that into that digital world? So it drives to a point of conversion. How do you then build the community from that perspective?
It's a great question. I would say that in any given month, 85 to 95 % of our EMV comes from organic conversation. So what we can do as a brand is to be really consistent on who we are, what we stand for, what our ethos are, what we look like, how we engage. And that really starts with friendship. And Amika means friend. And then the conversation will come. When people see...
Nilofer (25:39.586)
When people discover in our community, a lot of that is driven from our paid partners who are posting three, four, five times organically because they love the product or they feel a connection to the brand. But we also invest in the stylist community in a big way. We have a stylist collective, which are a group of stylists who are
you know, some of whom are pro-educators, some of whom are, more of a following in the consumer social. But really the objective there is to drive that credibility and that flywheel digitally for the brand with that authentic voice and credible voice.
Yeah. And this is going to sound really obvious, but to me, a lot of that must be word of mouth. Like you have to trust, give that brand narrative over to that community. And I suppose for you as well, Brent, what would be your advice for the brands that just can't, they have like such brand guardians inside that they just don't feel like they can give that brand narrative to the community and kind of get them to tell your story on your behalf. What would be your advice for brands that struggle to get that right?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's, you have to trust your community to, it's gonna happen whether you, you know, whether you want it to or not. I mean, the, it's really interesting because we're in this time right now and, you know, I'm sure it's come up at some point today where people are very skeptical of creators, right? Those, and it's kind of like, you know, is this person credible? Is this person someone I can trust?
because they're hawking one brand one day and then another the next day and, you know, are they just taking money or are really what they believe or stand for? And so I do think that, you know, for us, the stylists represent that real authentic voice and community and credibility, but we also have a really strong, you know, like, front talked about neighbors, we have our friends of the brand who are our brand ambassadors and people who have been with the brand for many, many years who have been
Nilofer (27:45.016)
You know, some of whom have graduated to become really big influencer with millions of followers and some of whom are just, you know, coming new into the brand and becoming voices. But I do think that we're going to start to see this movement towards the consumer as, you know, as that influencer. And it really does start with that, you know, that single word of mouth and that person who is just loves the brand so much that they're going to tell all their friends about it.
I hear about this all the time. have friend of mine, a very good friend of mine whose daughter discovered amica maybe five years ago and she's 18 years old now and she told her mom about it but she tells everybody about it and she's probably one of our, know, she has in her school has probably been a micro ambassador for amica but it's something that we see and hear about all the time.
We're into that business owner who's hesitant to hand it over to the community. And I'm speaking as a founder. You know, your company goes through several stages. When you are the founder, you are the salesperson. When you hire your employees, which your influencers, your content creators are your employees, that's your next stage of growth. But if you truly want to scale your company, then your customer has to be your mouthpiece.
If you don't get to that point where you can allow your community to be the mouthpiece, then you're never going to scale the company. There's just no hope.
Oh, think there's a lot of VP of brands that can learn from this. It's one of the things that I find it's like, I honestly think they have one of the most toxic roles in brands right now. There are these VP of brands that think that their responsibility is to control the aesthetic of their brand on the internet. like, this is, we can only let these people who are hot enough talk about us. Like everyone else who's a customer, no, no, no, you're not, we don't want you talking about us because you're going to ruin it. It's like, guys, this is the internet. Have you been on the internet? It's like, like,
Paul (29:39.074)
Your brand is your reputation. You cannot control that. You need to embrace it and understand how to like lean into it. So here, massively believe in that.
Just a reminder, obviously you'll have seen the big QR code, but if you have any questions, please get them in now.
Yeah, we do. We actually have one from Sierra. So how are you measuring brand awareness beyond impressions and reach through your own channels? And how can you prove that brand awareness is essential, not just an addition?
How do we look at brand awareness within our own channel? Was that the question?
Yeah, how do you measure brand awareness through and impressions reach through your own channels?
Brent (30:15.31)
That would be a question more for my CDO probably. For me personally, I'm just thinking about which members of our community tag the founders because some members are the kindest and I almost always will repost or share a comment on something that's tagged by me. So the more I see people tagging the founder, the more I know that we're doing something correctly.
Also, I'll go back to what I said before, the more people I hear shouting, hi neighbor, that, and then also I just coined this yesterday, it's the sweet green effect. Because I came into the city yesterday, I was in line at Sweetgreen and someone standing behind me said, I use Beacon of Product. And I turned around, it was just like 30 year old woman. And I said, yes, the Sweetgreen effect is someone in...
Sweet in line at Sweetgreen can say that they use your product because they recognize you then you have you have accomplished something so that That's my metric
Hahaha!
I love that. I mean, yes and. think, obviously, we love to hear those anecdotes and those stories of customers loving us, but we have to justify the investment as well. so we do always on tracking of our brand awareness consideration in our funnels. we work with TrackSuit. We measure that way.
Nilofer (31:48.994)
which is directional, but then we'll also do brand lift studies on all of our campaigns. And we'll also be looking at, you know, working on third party, you know, kind of primary research too on an annual basis to see how we're lifting. We work with our retail partners to understand how we are lifting our brand awareness in, you know, among their customer communities. So Sephora is a great partner of ours. We, you we work with them as well on tracking that on a longitudinal basis.
Oh, awesome. Good answer. I got a great question here. It's like, how do you correct your community when they misunderstand something about a product and still keep those fans?
I have a good one on this. So, you know, I think it's really about engaging in the conversation with them and not shying away from a difficult conversation. I don't know how many of you guys follow Hair Talk or, you know, the conversation, but there was this moment or a trend, you know, a few months ago that was, you know, people who were kind of taking...
heat protectants on paper and receipts, and then they were using hot tools on it and seeing if the heat protectant worked. And we had one creator who did that, and I think she was maybe the person that started the trend or something. And we invited her to our office to meet with Dr. Cicely, our head of product development, who is a phenomenal PhD and an influencer of own.
And so we had her then meet and had her learn more about our heat protectants and our products and how we formulated them and why this particular way of testing a product was inaccurate. And it really was this powerful moment where we came away at the end of the day. And obviously, I was there as a CMO, our team was there, and we kind of made it a full day and a full experience for
Nilofer (33:45.698)
for her and for her team. And so it just was a moment to lean into that content and to educate as well as to build a long lasting relationship.
Create what she was there.
Yeah, she did. Yeah.
And I think for us, see mentorship as an act of kindness. So we're always trying to educate and elevate anyone who's talking about our brand. And we always use those moments not only as a way to, I don't want to say correct, to educate that particular content creator, but to do it in the public forum. So if the post is made, we will say something like, that's interesting that you said it that way. Here's how we like to think about it. Or here's the next level down.
So that we're not only educating that content creator in a nice kind way, but also educating the community at the same time.
Paul (34:40.747)
I like that. So this one's from Anonymous, which is coming from a very human and community centric brands. Have you had to manage moments where your loyal advocates were let down by something and the brand had to regain their trust? How do you navigate that? think they're asking for a friend there.
Nilofer (34:59.01)
Yeah, I mean, think there's always those moments, right? When you have a consumer product, there might be quality issues or a pump might not work or something. And I think that, you know, we had to do a recall earlier this year that we proactively took because we started, you know, it actually started with our PD team smelling, you know, something in the product that, you know, in a shampoo. And, you know, it wasn't, it was something that we proactively went about and did, but we...
You know, we're now, then we had, it was an opportunity for us to engage with the community to make things right. We took the product back and then we, some people didn't want to give their products back because they were like, no, it smells fine to me. But it was also a moment for us when we quickly came back in stock because we proactively took that action. We were able to move very quickly and major shout out to our operations team for doing so to move back and come back and stock quickly to, you know, have the FDA pull down the.
the recall notice and record time in the industry to really rectify that and to come back to the client and say, we're back now. And that same 18-year-old girl the other day told me, can you please order me this shampoo because I am a diehard and I want it back. So it was, we didn't lose customers over that. It was an opportunity for us to reengage.
Yeah, and I think going back to how we talk about neighbor services and treating every customer as a neighbor, we train our neighbor services representative not just to make something right, but to make it right and then to make it better. So if a customer has a legitimate issue with a product, not only will they get a replacement product, they will get an additional product or an additional store credit or an additional gift certificate. And I think of one example a couple of years ago, every year,
Our most extravagant holiday product is our Advent calendar. It's usually around $200 retail price. And usually our V.I.B.s, which is very important, Beakmans, which is our loyalty program, they get first access because often we will sell out.
Paul (37:08.366)
As in not the V.I.N.'
I don't know. I think VIP, P and B kind of sounded better. And so one year we'd offered access to the Advent calendar and to the VIPs at a discount. And then a little bit later, our marketing team had decided, let's also, instead of discounting the Advent calendar for other customers, let's offer to give them our goatee Christmas ornament.
And which of course made some members of the loyalty program mad because they did not get the free go to ornament. And so instead of just saying, anybody who complained, give them the ornament. What we did was we issued a, an apology to our entire email list and said, you know what? We made this mistake and you're right. This was an oversight. If you're a loyalist to our company, you should get everything all the time. And so, not only are we going to.
give the ornament to the people who complained about it, everybody's getting a free ornament. And that demonstrated to the entire customer list, not just the loyalists, that we are a company that doesn't just make it right, we make it better. And that's why we have such a high repeat customer rate.
What a master class!
Verity (38:30.516)
I mean, this went so fast. We've got like another five cards of questions. So we're going to have to do a part two, Zayas. Thank you.
fantastic. Thank you very much. a lot for joining us.
Okay.
So that is it, ladies and gentlemen. So thank you very much for joining us. Before we go, mean, there's lots of cool stuff going. Oh, there we have. I've got lots of stuff to go on. Well, that's me. At least I clicked that that time there. Some thank yous, I think. Please do check out your goodie bags there. We have massive thanks to Mac, Lou Pearpugs, Bren for his book.
We've got Stanley cups in there as well for our friends at Stanley. so hopefully some of you guys got those engraved. It looks incredible. And again, massive thank you to the sponsors, Firmats, Hue, Power Digital and Duel. And then I think for me, particularly, is, we've got some big, big thank you for the BBA team, everyone involved, but particularly Lauren and Ewan, they've done an amazing job of it. Just to put that into perspective.
Paul (39:39.822)
On the messaging group, think Lauren's last message last night was about midnight and her first message was at 4.15. So I think like absolute kudos there that these guys have really played for us to put this on. I don't know if you guys knew that we had like a venue change last minute. Like the venue were bankrupt and then we had to find another one and we've got everything here. Like, it was really, really great. So well done everyone. You've done a phenomenal job for it. I will advance the slides. Yeah.
So we'll get to that bit there. So thank you for that. A couple of closing remarks, but a few things to bring up from there. This event, last time we did it, started out as a social commerce summit because social commerce was such a massive hot topic last year. And we've evolved it to be actually the broader whole aspect of brand advocacy because that is the thing that people need to be looking at here. And it's so great because we've had conversations the whole way through that's encompassing.
all the different sides of it. It's social, it's about who you are, it's about community, it's about brand, it's about reputation, everything about driving growth today. So like that is why it's the Brand Advocacy Summit. So we've been really great. So the great insights from there, we've got from Lindsay, creators of driving disruption, which is true. Love that. From Nathan, we can't think about the full impact of advocacy in the same way we think about paid media. AIUGC will be banned from branding.
I thought that was good. Yeah, I like that. Because if it hasn't got a social handle attached to it with a human on it, yeah, hey, hey to that. We all need to know what group seven means. So that's, that is great. In fact, you are group seven, but anybody needs to Google that. Yeah, that'd be fine. Or TikTok it. love this one from James. Brands just need to shut the fuck up. Absolutely golden there.
and I do think that, and is fantastic. Quite the day of the internet ruins everything. So, which is so true. so true. So, I think, this is us, like, we're to put another one of these on, I'm sure. And actually for the community, we've got, we've just opened up a space called the house of Brown advocacy up in Flatiron. So we're going to put on lots of little events, in this strange kind of quirky weird 80s apartment with gold taps and marble and stuff. It's,
Paul (42:06.282)
It's interesting. And it also, it's got very few toilets as well, just like this one. So like it will be, it will be on brand. So yeah, we'll be sending some invites there for like smaller intimate kind of get togethers and live recordings and things like that. So keep your eyes peeled. We'd love to speak to anyone who's got any guests you recommend or any feedback you've got. We'd love to kind of build it. That's this community. If you ever want to be connected with anyone, you've got their names, you can't remember who they are. Get in touch.
we'll be able to connect to you with everyone. So you get that connection from that perspective there. If you want to stay in touch, that is me. That is my LinkedIn. So you scan that. So give me a shout out. Paul Archer. I've just moved to New York. I don't have any friends. if you want to be my friends, that would be it. We'd love to jam on that. And then also we've got a little bit of a challenge. So everyone get your phones out, please.
scan your preference here, whether that's the Apple podcast or the Spotify podcast and scan it. And if you think this has been really impactful and helpful, then please send it to one person who you think would benefit from this. And if you're not following, obviously click follow as well while you're at it. like, please, if you think, cause all the content we've done today is going to be captured and put on the podcast and on YouTube, on your YouTube lease. then, but if you think there's someone you know would learn from this and think this would be valuable, then please send it to them.
Massively thank you for that. That's awesome. And I think again, massive thanks to the sponsors. It is time for drinks and dessert. Come on, we're at Taylor Swift Doos Shots. Thank you very much everyone. That's been great.
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