Name: Founder Friday: Meet Jessica Iclisoy, founder of organic skincare company, California Baby.
Uploaded: 2017-02-24
Duration: 15 min 34 s
Description: She discusses the importance of constantly iterating your product to match the needs of the customer.

[ BLANK_AUDIO ] Hi Facebook, my name is Polina Marinova and this is Founder Friday. I'm here with Jessica Iclisoy founder of California Baby. Jessica- Hello. Hi, how are you? I'm good, how are you? Good, and thank you so Thank you so much for joining us today. So, you created California Baby 20 years ago. I did. Tell me how you started, what compelled you to start this business? I didn't intend to start a business. It really was a passion project and it was very mission driven. I was a new mom, and I was living a natural, organic lifestyle, shopping at my health food store, or farmer's market, buying organic. And, one day I happened to pick up, at the library, a chemical dictionary. [ LAUGH ] Random, I know. But I was like, this is interesting, and I went home, and I said, let me look up the ingredients in the shampoo that I was using on my son. You started looking up ingredients. [ LAUGH ] Yeah, I started looking up ingredients. And I was comparing it to the conventional product. So I was like, well, my natural product says sodium laurel sulfate, and the conventional product says sodium laurel sulfate. My natural product says Synthetic fragrances. My conventional product says synthetic fragrances. And I was just like, the only difference between these two products was the marketing. And that I thought, in [ UNKNOWN ], I think I'm doing the very best for my child. I'm shopping at a health food store. And that was really disappointing for me, cuz I just thought it wasn't okay to sell basically an adult shampoo, marketed to a baby, but the ingredients weren't different. So you started looking up these harmful chemicals that were in The shampoos .>> That's right. And you created your first product, a shampoo, in your own kitchen, now you developed the formula. Did you have a background with this? I didn't. Actually my background was in fashion. Okay. [ LAUGH ] I was a buyer for a French designer and so I travel to Europe a lot, and I decided to stop that cuz it could be it burns you out after a certain time and I love it, [ COUGH ] But I was done with it, and I decide to have children, so kinda dedicated myself to having a child, and I was self taught, and I was actually helped and mentored. I got lucky. I had a chemist who actually lived on the other side of the country. I was in California, he was in New Jersey, and we were telephone pals. And I just randomly cold called and said, hey, I'm trying to find an alternative to sodium [ UNKNOWN ] [ UNKNOWN ] Alternative to fragrance and he said well, I was at the library. I would go to UCLA and I would look up ingredients and, yeah this is before the Internet, you can just Google it. You actually had to hit the pavement. And he would walk me through on how to make it. You know, on the kitchen stove, so making skin care products, is kind of like cooking, in a way, so if you understand cooking, you can make a skin care product, and that's what I was doing. That's so crazy, so you're kind of a pioneer in this whole organic skin care product movement. Was it really difficult to sell this notion of organic baby products? Before it was mainstream. It was and it wasn't. It was difficult because it was so ahead of its time and I had to spend a lot of time educating people to its benefits. So, that was as difficult as it got. And but then when I would talk to moms and moms who were my target audience. And I would explain to them The dangers of synthetic fragrances and is how damaging sodium laurel sulfate is to the skin and to the eyes, they got it and they went, yeah, sure, they would buy it, so that was encouraging for me that kept me going. That's awesome, and you started this business with only $ 2, 000 that you had borrowed from your mom. Yeah. And you built this into an $ 80 million business. Yeah. Without any outside capital. Correct. Why did you go down that route? Well. I think for me, again I wasn't looking at it as a business. So I wasn't, I didn't have an exit strategy. I didn't do it that way, it was really, it was my other baby. And I wanted to raise it and I also wanted to have complete control and autonomy. I didn't want somebody telling me what to do. How to do it, that needs to be cheaper, these needs to be done a certain way, I didnt know my husband telling me what to do. Yeah. I wanted it to be my project. Yeah. And we have a Facebook question. How did you build your brand on and how difficult was it? Well You know, one thing I think people should remember is it takes time. So everything is difficult. Nothing is easy. If you stick to it, you get better and you learn what you're doing. But over time, things get easier. In what sense Well, so because things start to pay off for you, right? So you're planting seeds and if you're not expecting the brand to go into an IP hill in six months or a year, you have the opportunity to really build a good foundation. Yeah. And so I've been doing this for 20 years, which sounds like a long time, and it is a long time, but that's how long the brand takes. I think people forget that it's not instantaneous. I mean how did you build your brand into a trusted brand? You have all these partnerships or deals with Target and Whole Foods. [ CROSSTALK ] Uh- huh. How difficult was it pitching those retailers as well as creating a trusted brand? Okay, so the only retailer I pitched was Whole Foods, because they were my first customer. And the way Whole Foods works is that you go Regionally and you go store by store. So I would go store by store and talk to the buyer and get the product on the shelf. But Target actually came to us. And I didn't go into Target right away, because I didn't think the customer was ready. So that's a core of how. I do business, is I don't chase invoices, I don't chase sales. I want the product to be successful. So if I don't think that customer is ready for our product I will wait, and eventually they will be ready. And they were, and so I was in touch with the Target buyer. And in fact, we just launched into Walmart, and it was the same thing. I had been talking to the Walmart buyer for about three years, and I said, it's not ready yet, it's not ready yet. And then finally I said, okay, I think it's ready, and- How did you know that, though? You can tell sometimes by The other products that they're selling and if they're succesful. So they, if they're selling organic food and then, that's the same customer so I would that gives me a clue, if they're, it's really just more about. Quality cuz our products require a certain amount of knowledge to understand. They're not the cheapest on the shelf. In fact, they are the most expensive on the shelf. Interesting. And they are the most expensive for a reason, but that customer has to value Why we are more expensive. Yeah. We're not just more expensive because we want to be. There's a reason. Our ingredients are more expensive. Our process is more expensive. We grow our own flowers in Santa Barbara. We do our own extractions. Yeah. We do a lot of testing. And that adds cost. That's so interesting. But our customer appreciates that. And they're willing to pay. They're willing to pay for it. Got it. Another Facebook question. Did you rebrand at any point to stay relevant? Constantly. Really? Actually, and I think if you went to a consultant they would say, don't do that, right? I mean My main marketing vehicle was our label. Obviously, the product too. The product had to perform, but we didn't do advertising. We still don't do advertising. You don't do traditional advertising? Have never, ever. How do you- I The product has to do the work for me. And that was my philosophy. The product has to do the work. So when you open that shampoo, or you open the cream, and you use it, you are feeling feeling the difference. You're smelling the difference. You know, and that's what our customer gets from California Baby. And then at the same time, I think our labels were like the chattiest labels ever. Like, they were just, I would talk to Mom on the back label, and it says, we're not using sodium laurel sulfate, this is why it's not. Over time, I've actually had to Edit that down a little bit, still keep that core message. I don't wanna lose that, cause that's how I talk to you. So I'm not afraid to number one, change formulations, which a lot of company Companies don't want to do. I actually How many times have you changed formulation? At least three major formulation changes. Because what happens in skin care, you change one thing, it affects everything else. So if I change a preservative or if I want to bring in a new emollient or an emulsifier Well, it's kind of like a brand new playmate at the sandbox. You know, you've kinda got to make room for it. Other ingredients might not like it. But I think it's important for us to be pushing the line on sustainability, green ingredients, and I always want to be ahead of the curb. And in fact I believe our formulations are years Ahead of any other company that calls themselves natural. Got it. And you've recently said that women are better negotiators. Can you elaborate on that? I do feel that women are better negotiators. And I want them to Get out there and negotiate and don't be afraid because we have natural talents. We want to make a deal for everybody. We want everybody to be happy. I think sometimes, men come in and they feel like it's a win- lose proposition. Interesting. You don't believe that? I don't believe that. I've had the same suppliers for 20 years. And I work with them. And I want them to be successful and I want them to support me. And I wanna be successful. So a lot of the times, the conversations will start, when I negotiate is, okay what do you need? Tell me what you need and let me see if I can get there. And I can do it if I can support it. Yeah. And this is what I need and let me tell you why I need it, right. Yeah. I'm asking you for a better price let's say for we're negotiating on price. Mm- hm. Or many times I negotiate for custom ingredients. There is a value there too. Do something special for me and. This is what I need, this is why I need it, and I'll stick with you and I'll be loyal to you. Yeah, and we have a Facebook question that's asking about the business differences between the East Coast and the West Coast. That's a great question. Okay, and there are business differences, I have to say. It took us quite a while to break into New York. Cuz you're national. We're national, and we're actually international too. We do a lot of business in Asia, specifically China. We're really big there, because they're really particular about the products that they use. So We will tend to do well in kind of progressive areas. But you know, the east coast, the first five, eight years was like, hm, California. Can you change the name? I'm like no, the name is called California Baby. But you know, people get hung up on different things. And that was kind of before California was super cool and every but it was kind of like California is the flaky state. It's interesting. Yeah, so it took us the longest to really do very well in New York City. What was that trigger that? Helped. I have to tell you I think it's just time. Yeah. I think we just didn't go away. Our moms kept coming into the store asking for it. We never cut down on quality. In fact, we always Improved quality, so you kinda couldnt ignore us and I think that's what happened. Tell me about this natural advisory council that you created late last year. What is it about and why is this important right now? Right. So When I started, the industry was small, right? Mm- hm. And it was very specific in wellness. And, as it's grown, we know, look, in the beginning, I had to educate people even on what organic meant. Wow. Even if it was organic food. I can't even imagine that today. Everyone knows organic. Exactly. So, that's what I spent a lot of my time doing, but now you don't have to. The market has grown There's a great awareness. But with this awareness and this growth of the market come people who wanna come in and win the lottery and they want to change what the meaning of natural, right? And I believe that when people come to natural, or better for you products, or wellness products, they're coming to solve a problem. Right, like I did. I was a new mom. That's usually when people come to natural. They get pregnant, they wanna be healthy or they have a health issue. They have skin allergies or they have immune issues. They have cancer. So this is Maybe one of the first times they walk into a health food store. And so what I started to see on the shelf, is what I call green washing. So on the front label, it says natural, it says all the great things. And then you turn it in the back, and it has everything that you really don't want. And I think that that's dangerous. I think that we have to stand for something and people have to be able to trust the meaning of natural. So I started the natural advisory council because again, I didn't see anybody really interested in doing it. And we say our mission is ACE, it's to advocate, collaborate, and educate. And that's with our colleagues, it's with. So if another company doesn't know how to make a natural product, we will help them. You know make it. Very interesting. We'll help them with formulations. We'll be doing educational programs. We need to educate consumers on what is natural, we need to educate doctors. You go to your dermatologist Yeah. He can't tell you what's natural and what isn't natural. So, that's the mission of Knack. To just basically educate, this is where we're at, but this is where we really should be. Yeah, in taking an active role in the whole cosmetics industry. Yeah, exactly. Awesome, well thank you very much Jesse. Thank you. [ UNKNOWN ] It. Thank you Facebook and we'll see you next time on Founder Friday. [ INAUDIBLE ] That was so great. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Founder Friday: Meet Jessica Iclisoy, founder of organic skincare company, California Baby.

She discusses the importance of constantly iterating your product to match the needs of the customer.