Hello and welcome back to the podcast. It's great to have you here, Lauren. Thank you so much . So my first question to you is, well, you're a really, very much a mission driven brand and, you know, you created , the brand out of a, a need that you saw yourself and a gap you saw in the market. So you wanna tell us the story of how you came up with it yeah, absolutely. So I am a working parent. I've always been sort of in operations and strategy my whole career. But I'm also a mom, so I have two boys. They are seven and nine now. But when they were younger a few years back, I really was feeling overwhelmed with how fast they would grow.

And as a working parent and a parent in general, you just have so much on your plate constantly and things to do, and I felt like clothing. Was one of the culprits of that. I would go and buy them clothes and shop and spend money and then the next week they would outgrow it. So I was looking for ways to solve that problem for myself as a parent and just make life easier.

But also at the same time, just saw how much stuff we were accumulating in our home and thought, Well, if I'm gonna solve this problem, like, can we do. It in a way that helps parents, but also is more sustainable than the options that exist today. And so it really came from that core issue of just like one parent in their home, figuring out how to sift through all the clothes that they outgrow so fast.

And just imagine that with 1,000, a million parents doing the same thing. So that's where we came from and we're really focused on two areas. One is we wanna make parents' life easier. You don't have to spend all your time running around to different stores, just outsource this to us. But the other thing is really around the planet.

We want a company that can be successful, but also be doing good. And our two focuses around sustainability are to extend the life of. So reuse as much as we possibly can, and then to divert all of the clothing from landfill.

Amazing. I know it's so important. As a parent myself, I really , I really feel the frustration. My son just seems to grow like crazy. So before we dig into marketing, I'm always fascinated because I'm a marketer and I'm not someone who's, I've worked a little bit inside E-com stores, but definitely never on the logistical side.

Tell me about like, how, what that process looked like for you for kind of figuring out how you're gonna. Make this work because it's not just you are delivering a product to people and then that's the end of it, right? You've got a whole circular thing going on and there's a lot of complications to it.

Yeah. So I think the first thing is, my whole background is in strategy, operations, logistics, and problem solving. So as much as I think back now, like, oh, I could have started a business that was less complex. It hasn't scared me yet. So I love solving this crazy complex issue. I just started at the very beginning with a small group of parents that I knew.

Mm-hmm. Really trying to understand things like, where do I get the clothes from? How much is shipping gonna cost? How are we gonna package, you know, how often do people swap their clothing in and out? How long can we use each item for?

We started barcoding every single item. So we have data on every piece of inventory that's. In there around how many times it's gone out, how long a customer has kept that item, why it was retired, if it was retired which has given us a lot of information.

One on just like how much we are expecting to be able to use things, mm-hmm , but also helps us like purchasing decisions where we buy from, which brands and which items within a brand are more durable and will last. So a lot of those pieces was just, let's just start and figure out a way to track the data.

The other thing That's been really interesting is there's some models out there, like in women's clothing there's Rent the Runway and there's newly, and there's some other models which, or even you think about like bicycle rentals at the beach or where, like there's places that are doing this thing where they're using something over and over again.

But when you think about an e-commerce startup, There's Shopify and there's all these other stores where you can open out of the box. Our model, you know, fits 70% of those out of the box solutions. So we've had to really add a lot of pieces to make it work and to be able to actually, you know, deliver on our promise to, or customer and to be able to really understand the customer.

because everything is coming. It's a relationship. It's a month, over month, over month as the baby grows. And so we're constantly learning more about the, the family, more about, you know, our business. And right now everything that we built for the most part is like, , you know, no code technology because we're for the most, pa most part, been a bootstrap business.

So every time we figure something out, we, you know, develop a new process, try to improve, and just every day is, is getting better, better and better. Yeah. Amazing. Retention marketing is such a key part of e-commerce now because of the rising ad costs. But for you guys, it's everything, right?

Retention is everything. Like you can't afford to acquire a customer that leads you after a month or two. So how are you thinking about retention, marketing, and what strategies have you done to to build those long-term relationships with your customers?

So I think the first part is the way that we structured our membership.

So we. You get charged on a monthly fee and it you have access to seven items or 15 items of clothing, and the family gets to choose that. We take information about them on what styles they prefer, what brands they prefer and those things. But one of the things that's different about us than like a traditional subscription is that we allow customers to swap any time that they want.

Kids and babies don't grow on like a regular schedule. Mm. So I think one of those things is our customer is engaging with us every time they need something new. So if they you know, all of a sudden the newborn baby grows out of it two weeks later. They haven't been charged that next time, but they don't have clothes that fit.

So they'll submit a swap. We have a swap request form, which asks 'em the size and different things, and our customers are able to tell us. Brands that they loved, items that they really liked within their box or didn't

you know, and so those kinds of a thing, it's, it's this relationship that happens over and over that we establish with the customer of like, help me make my life a little easier. we deliver, help it again, we deliver again. And so I think our retention has really just been delivering a quality product and a quality service.

Because I think if we deliver then we're retaining, We're retaining over 90% of our customers month over month, but we. We want them to stay much longer. You know, we want them to be with us for as their child grows. Yeah,

So now we go up to size five, which is sort of before school age. Cool. Yeah. Zero to. To toddler. And we found that that's doing really well and our customers are staying with us.

And then even when customers get up into that, you know, two years old, three years old, now their families are adding an additional membership for the younger baby that's come along the way. But we do have added, like with our one time rental seasonal stuff, Halloween, winter, we do do larger sizes up to size 10.

So talking about the marketing then, what have you, what has been most successful for you in terms of acquiring your customers and what has not worked as well? We need to have customers that are gonna stay with us mm-hmm.

to make it valuable. Mm-hmm. . I mean, the first thing for us is we're marketing to moms. So moms talking to other moms is our most powerful acquisition strategy. We have a referral program and we've been starting to build out more of an influencer, an affiliate program, and those have been the most successful for us.

We are starting to think about how do we do that at a larger scale? So how do we get like local affiliates that are gonna be, that are networked within groups in their cities where we can really start to push and grow that way.

What has not worked for us is, at the end of last year, we did have a lot of growth from paid ads and Facebook and Instagram and but what was happening was those customers weren't staying with us. Mm-hmm. . So it was the customers that heard about them through a friend or met us at an event, or you know, were following us for a while, followed us on email, opened all of our emails, followed us on.

Social media and was engaging with us. And then those people 10 months later might convert maybe just because the baby wasn't born yet or the, you know, timing wasn't right cause they had a bunch of clothes that grandparents put in and they didn't need them just at that time. So it has been this like very long game of like just continuing to offer value.

Whether that's on email, social, our blog and content. And so that's what we've been really trying to dig in and invest in in the last few months, is just making sure that we're offering a lot of value to the parents outside of just the service. Mm-hmm. so that they're engaging with us and when the time comes that they either have that new baby or they realize they don't have clothing that were like right off the top of their.

Yeah, so that's interesting. So your data supported, basically when you acquired a customer through paid media. So we're talking Facebook, Instagram, maybe Google, they were converting, but they were churn very quickly. Yes, I would say less so on Google. We did have some. Very minimal spend, we've put behind Google.

But in terms of people that are searching for renting baby clothes, which is not very many of them, Yeah, they're very ready to buy, right? Yeah. They're ready to commit because they're looking specifically for us, although they don't know it's yet. So those customers have been better in terms of converting or like staying with us in retention, but.

Facebook and Instagram have been less so not that we won't try it again. Like I'm sure you know, there's different ways we can test and different messaging and different, There's millions of different things we could try. Yeah. It's interesting. So I wonder if.

I'm trying to think like what my hypothesis of why that might be. So firstly, maybe Facebook as a Meta is, is putting your ads in front of people who buy a lot of things online, right? Cause that's, it's optimizing for purchase and it, it knows who buys a lot of things online. And maybe people who buy a lot of things online aren't actually the kind of conscious very, you know, intentional shopper that you're going after.

So they're like, Oh, this is fun. I'm gonna try this. But then they're not actually your right audience. That could be one theory. So a way to get around that could be to do, you know, you could do a much higher funnel strategy. So you could either do a campaign, just collecting email addresses and then nurture those people.

So you optimize for the lead generation of the email address, and then you nurture them through email and you kind of introduce them to your social channels and it's like a slower, longer funnel. Or you could even try, you know, like video view ads for instance, or brand awareness ads, although you don't wanna put too much budget towards brand awareness cuz it can kind of just be a.

Impressions for not much action, but certainly maybe video views where you are telling the whole story and then you're retargeting those people that have watched a lot of those videos. Mm-hmm. . So you're kind of taking a slower, longer funnel approach to your. To the way you're acquiring those customers, if, if it is in fact true that this is more, you know, it's a more considered intentional purchase.

So those are some tips for you off the top of my head. Cool. Okay. And so tell me, I'm always fascinated about influencer marketing. So how have you gone about that? Like, have you got to a point now where you have a process

I'd say we, we've definitely, we just really started dipping into this maybe three months ago. Mm-hmm. . And I think we have much more of a process down, but it is very fragmented still. Yeah. We started, because we've been Boots job, we have raised a little bit of money, but most of the time we're trying to be very cash efficient.

And so we've been trying to work with influencers either that are, you know, A small budget or are able to do gifting. And so we've actually had a lot of success. I think the biggest thing we've been focusing on is just content. So instead of us creating all of the content, Them creating the content.

And so I think our channels have been growing and we just are much more active and have a lot more engagement just from the last couple of months with these influencers. Awesome. And I think the same thing. You know, we're a product where we don't just want an unboxing. We want people to show the product, show their kids playing in it, you know, see the swapping process, see their clothes coming back.

So it's also been building relationships with those influencers and having them go through the process and then see like, Oh, and then this is what the value you. Again after your purchase. Yeah. So it's been a longer engagement with them and that's been a lesson, I guess. But it's been really interesting and I think we also get a lot of ideas from them.

Yeah. Which has been really cool. And I would say they're all moms and they're not. We have some dad influencers, which has been fun. They're really cool people too. And like give us, like, one of them is a product manager and she's like now helping us with our look at our website flows and you know, one is a content and a copywriter and like just, it's been really interesting to engage with that community.

Amazing. And people who just like, They wanna learn about new stuff and they wanna give you their feedback. . Yeah. That's great. So it sounds like you are you're building a really great community and starting to get to know who your customers are. Do you wanna talk to us a little bit about like, how, how you've done that and, and what advice you have for other founders that are wanting to kind of better understand their audience?

Yes, definitely. So I think one thing is we try to get to know them just through our product. So we get to know them through their swapping process. So we have a quiz at the very beginning of their journey where they tell us, Not only just things about the style of clothes they want, but also like, why did you come to us?

Do you want to be more intentional about consumption? Do you want to support women owned businesses? Like why did you, why did you come here? So getting to know them as well so that, that surveying helps us. But one other thing we've done, and I've done this probably at least three times in the last year.

Is open up just my calendar. So we'll say like we we're looking for feedback this week. Lauren is available book a 15 minute window on her calendar. And we send it to all of our customers and even like people that haven't bought us our full list, and we've had a lot of people take us up on that. So the last round I did probably 25, 15 minute meetings, one on one with our customers or potential customers.

And that was really interesting because we not only talked about like what their kids are and why they found out about us, but also what do they do for work And you know, just like talking like I would with any parent and that, I think it just gives a much fuller picture of who our customers are, why they.

Came to us in the first place and found us and, and why they care about this at all. Yeah. And so those I think have been the most powerful and I think we, I would love to just keep doing that over time. Yeah. And we, we've been doing them for specific things like , we were thinking about changing the membership structure or, you know, we're thinking about what seasonal products people might like.

But I think in general people are just like open to share and kinda excited that you're reaching. Because they're on board with your mission, aren't they? So it's not just like, you know, if Target did that, I guess they'd get a lot of angry customers booking calls with the ceo. Whereas these are people who are behind your mission and really want you to succeed.

I mean, I think that's such a genius idea. So like, yeah, I would, I would recommend that to all of our listeners, all of my clients, like do that. Like, yeah, especially this, you know, the ceo, the founder, talk to your customers. You will learn so much about, What drives them. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, and I think it, I mean, it's, it's probably a more expensive way to, for customer acquisition, but we, you know, there were several people who I spoke with who had heard about us and had been following us and reading our emails, but hadn't bought yet.

Yeah. Um, And I, talking with them, they've made a purchase and now they're, you know, now they're customers, but, But even just like learning about why they hadn't made that decision yet is really important too. Yeah, that's amazing. That's fascinating that they still got to call with you. Cool. So changing tack a little bit, what has surprised you most about growing running a product business slash eCommerce store subscription business?

Oh, that's a hard question. . I think, I mean, I come from a different industry, so I came from, before this I was in education and before that and in transportation, so like completely different industries and I think it's, there's just so much to learn. Mm-hmm. , I, that's surprises me. And. I mean from everything like the various shipping platforms and shipping rates and like the way that logistics happens in three pl and yeah, like there is so much that goes into eCommerce and fulfillment and like where you get your inventory, how do you store your inventory that I feel like I could be doing this for a hundred years and still not know everything.

So I think that's been the thing is just like this industry is kind of a beast, especially if you're trying to, like us, we have a massive amount of variety in our inventory and we have this whole return, you know, checking back in process. So it's more complex. But I just feel like. There's so much out there, but in some ways that's exciting because that means there's opportunity to always get better and get more efficient and, you know, provide a better service.

So, I think that's probably what I would say. Yeah. And then figuring all that out with a global pandemic, recession, supply side challenges, like, I mean, it is such a crazy time to be running this kind of business, I will say. But it really is, I mean, I would say the one thing I do feel like we've been in a good position about is the supply chain.

We, because we have such a variety, we have over 400 brands in our inventory. . Like if one shipment was stuck somewhere, we just turn and get another retailer or buy wholesale somewhere else. So that flexibility in our inventory has really helped Yeah. To be able to deliver and to grow and scale quickly without, you know, waiting on a shipment.

What has been your moment when you felt like, wow, this is all just too hard and I wanna give up?

Have there been any moments like that when too many things have gone wrong at once? And how have you got through it? Oh, I think I feel that like every single week, . Well that's good to be honest, because I think, you know, from social media, people see how highlights real and it's hard for entrepreneurs to share their failures because they don't wanna freak out their customers.

But it's good to also be honest so that other entrepreneurs know that they're not alone. . Yeah, absolutely. Well, yeah, I'm honest about that. I think this is hard. It's really hard. And I think the first time, so I, the first 18 months or so that I was building the business, I worked full-time at another job to fund the business.

And that was also in the pandemic. Yeah. And also when I have two boys that are learning from home, two kids and home all the time. And you know, a husband that works. So I think that it was just to a point where it was like, this is way too much. I was getting up at, you know, four in the morning every day to like pack boxes, get some stuff out the door, do all that, go onto my regular job,

and then at night, same thing. And those times are really difficult I think to just keep going cuz you're just exhausted. And I think we had like a similar point this year where we grew a lot between then and now. And we still have major ambitions of where we wanna go. So I think sometimes you think.

God, we're not where I thought we were gonna be right now. Or you know, we did this big event, we put all this energy into it and we didn't get all the customers that we were intending. And you know, it's just not, not working. Something's not working. Like, are we doing this right? And so I think those questions happen all the time.

And for me, there's a couple of things that help. Number one, my partner is like incredibly supportive of this . So if I get in that place, he's like, I believe in this. This is gonna work. Like, look at what you've done so far. You gotta keep going. So I think having people like that, that are gonna continue to cheer you on.

But then I think there was another founder I talked to, which is important. Have a group of founders that you can talk to. . Yeah. They just like, you know, reflect on where we were a year. Yeah. Like what was it a year ago? How many customers did you have? Like, what was happening? How are we struggling?

You know, even back to the very beginning, like pitching this idea with one customer or whatever, you know, like zero revenue, look how far we've come. And I think it's hard in the day to day to, to see that trajectory. Yeah. And you have to sometimes have other people remind you about it. Mm-hmm. . Totally. Or like create a practice.

Yeah, looking backwards and celebrating how far you've come. I think I could definitely take that advice as well. Like I think as an entrepreneur, you are usually an ideas person. You've got this huge vision where you are trying to get to, and then you are fighting problems all along the way, and you just don't even have the time to look back and go, Wow, you know, look how many subscribers we have now.

You know, look at what we've created. Yeah, it's a really, really good point and especially as we are potentially gonna face some tough times, like staying, like you say, like having your husband saying you believe in this. Like you've gotta keep believing, don't you, that you're gonna make it through.

Yeah. And what about mentors? Have you sort mentors accidentally found mentors, paid for mentors? How have you approached that? Yeah, so I. Our company was accepted. We were part of the Los Angeles Clean Tech incubator, and through that program I have a one on one mentor that I meet with regularly.

Amazing. And I think that's really helpful. You know, somebody that's been in it before, they've created their own businesses, they've built their own businesses, they've done all of the, the things. To be able to, you know, have an open door of just like, Oh, these are all the challenges that we're facing right now.

How do I set goals around this? I mean, he's been amazing from everything from, you know, like onboarding employees and hiring to helping think about fundraising and how do we pitch the business like understanding our financial model. So that has been really helpful, having just like one person. Is there during the journey.

And then the other is like, I guess just friends and friends of friends that I didn't really talk to before because it was different industries, different jobs, different whatever. But one of our early investors who's a family and friend, you know, he's. My husband's best man, , but I never would talk to him cuz he's in a completely different industry before and like what I was doing previously in my career.

But he's building a. Growth company. And so I now reach out to him. And I think that's one of the hard things is like, I don't wanna ask him about this or but on some of those hard days of like, I, I need to maybe raise prices or I need to make this difficult decision and I'm not sure how to do that, or if it's the right decision to be able to reach out to somebody that's been in that same spot.

and get advice from them is so valuable. And sometimes he's like, you are making the correct decision. Like, you know what you're get, you just need that, you know, validation and someone to say like, Okay, now you, you know, you need to do this. Here's advice on how to do it. Yeah. So, Those have been kind of my key people. Yeah. And so what's next? You have bootstrapped so far with a little bit of investment, like is the plan to take investment or are you gonna continue to bootstrap? How are you looking at growth for the next phase? Yeah, so we. Have grown and we are continuing to grow.

I think like the last three to six months, we've really been laying foundational pieces to grow faster. And like you were saying before, testing all these different pieces of like, where are we gonna find the people that are gonna stick with us and be real, real on customers? So I think we're in a really good place for that.

Now, we've bootstrapped to this point and. I think to accelerate that, we're gonna raise so I'm planning right now to raise an additional angel round. Mm-hmm. . And then ideally where we want to go and like what the future of this is, is children's retail's massive market. And we could be a huge direct to consumer company.

Just by reaching out to parents. In the US there's like 16 million, you know, families that have kids in, in under five or whatever. But really what we believe is that like rent romper can sit in the middle of parents that have really difficult, complicated overburdened lives. Retail has this really interesting dynamic around overproduction and.

Excess inventory. And often some of those retailers have a sort of one time relationship with their customer. And then our planet, like we know that this is incredibly wasteful and none of this is really working. So we're our dream goal, you know, where we ultimately wanna be is sitting in the middle of all of that.

Mm-hmm. to be like partner with a retailer to say, Let us take your excess inventory and your returns. Mm-hmm. , we'll earn revenue for you off of it. and you're gonna get to build a much different relationship with your customer than you would in a traditional retail. That's really interesting. So that's ultimately where we wanna go and.

So we want angel funding now to like accelerate and just prove the market and prove our strategy for go to market. And then once we do that, we probably will try to raise institutional funding to really scale with retail as well. Yeah, awesome. Exciting times ahead for you, ? Yes. Exciting, challenging. All of the above, but yeah, totally like we're very excited.

Yeah. And how are you gonna manage, how do you manage balancing like personal time, family time, and your business? Huh , I mean, I think as a mom and like I, sometimes the balance is like, it's not really balance, I think . Yeah. Well you never have a balance really. But. , I guess for us, we just try to like be really clear about what our priorities are.

Mm-hmm. And what our, like core values are as a family. I read his book one time or, and. just about how to you like understand your core values and what you believe in for you and for your kids and for us that's like community and being creative and being in nature. And so those are our priorities and I feel like if we can accomplish those things and the house is dirty, then that's fine.

Yeah, , they're like, if we get to spend time together and we play a board game, but I ordered pizza that night, then you know, whatever, that's fine. So I think. Being clear on what is important to me and to our family, and then being okay that the other stuff doesn't always get dead. I love that. I feel very inspired by that.

I'm with you, . My house is frequently not, not very clean, but my business is thriving in my family. You know, we're together. So yeah, , that's nice. And one of my friends says too, like, that's how you know that there's a love in the house. You know, there's love and there's fun in the house if it's messy, so, Yeah, exactly.

Awesome. Well, do you have anything else you wanna share with our listeners? Any advice, tips, or anything to finish off? Well, I think if you are interested in rent and romper or kids' clothing or really interested in, you know, being more conscious about how we consume I think it's really cool to start at the age.

They start to be conscious consumers from day one. So if you're interested about that, you can email me and find us on Rentaromper.com or Instagram or TikTok or all the places. Yeah. And I'll link all of those in the show notes so people can find you quickly and easily. What's the best channel to follow you on if they wanna find one social channel to kind of, you know, follow your journey, those channels?

Probably Instagram @rentaromper awesome. All right. Well thanks for coming along. Thank you so much. It was great to talk to you. Yeah.