Chelsa Crowley & Julie Fredrickson
CEO and Co-Founders, Stowaway Cosmetics
Discussion
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Julie Fredrickson
@almostmedia · CEO & Co-Founder Stowaway
Hi - I'm Julie Fredrickson, cofounder of Stowaway Cosmetics. I'm a third time startup founder (one successfully exited, one deadpooled and the third one Stowaway is doing OK!). I'm delighted to be here-- ask me anything! Seriously anything. I like to swear and nothing offends me.
& Hello! I'm Chelsa Crowley, cofounder of Stowaway Cosmetics. I began my career as a makeup artist before working in-house with big beauty brands on product education and editorial. I can talk all day about branding and, of course, makeup! I'm delighted to be here-- ask me anything!
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Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
@almostmedia & @chelsa Thanks so much for joining us today! During your career to date, what is the best piece of advice you've ever been given? Flip side - what's the worst?
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Julie Fredrickson
@almostmedia · CEO & Co-Founder Stowaway
@ems_hodge oh man great question! So best advice (not that anyone ever gave it to me in particular) is to NEVER be embarrassed. Doing stupid stuff is the first step on the path to getting something right. On the flip side probably to take a few years and have a "real" job before becoming an entrepreneur.
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Chelsa Crowley
@chelsa · Co-Founder, CCO Stowaway Cosmetics
@ems_hodge Best advice (and i now give it often to others) is to know what you are bad at, it's half that battle IMHO. Knowing what you're good at is easy but taking that step and admitting that you are bad at something will push you so much further in your career. Also, who cares if you're bad at something in particular, you can always hire around it :)
Phil Nguyen
@p_ngu · The Daily Water Cooler + Vettery
Thanks @almostmedia and @chelsa for taking the time!
Just wanted to say that my fiancee just tried out your products for the first time this last weekend (at STORY in Chelsea) and loves them. The concept of "right sizing" traditionally expensive/personal products makes a ton of sense to me.
What's the key to battling huge incumbent players, especially in the consumer cosmetics industry that's dominated by a few companies with deep pockets and marketing $$?
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Chelsa Crowley
@chelsa · Co-Founder, CCO Stowaway Cosmetics
@p_ngu Awesome! I was manning that Story event so maybe I was the one helping your fiancee (tell her thx for the support!). Honestly, Julie and I sent out to make women's lives easier by pairing down the size, the choice, and making a great product so she knows she doesn't have to think about it because we already did. I know from being in-house at these large incumbents that they do not think about their customers. They are driven to create more and more products to continue getting their sales since its almost impossible to finish a product so newness is huge in beauty. Besides, these incumbents don't even know who their end customers are -- their retail partners do (think about it: Sephora knows more about me than any brand that I purchase from -- that is crazy!)
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Julie Fredrickson
@almostmedia · CEO & Co-Founder Stowaway
@chelsa @p_ngu yeah replying to that it is fascinating how deeply entrenched these major conglomerates are in their outdated business models. 70% of the industry is consolidated into 10 conglomerates. They are all publicly traded and they really need to maintain their existing profit centers which are full size overpriced products they wholesale. So in some sense we aren't really competing with them because they cant' compete with us. To deliver a right sized product direct to their consumer at a reasonable price would require a major retrenchment of their business model. Classic innovators dilemma right?
Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
Hi, Julie and Chelsa! What's been the most surprising thing that's happened to you in your entrepreneurial career?
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Chelsa Crowley
@chelsa · Co-Founder, CCO Stowaway Cosmetics
@rrhoover first and foremost, having a crazy idea and others believing in you (ie. friends, family, and of course investors) is a pretty magical thing
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Julie Fredrickson
@almostmedia · CEO & Co-Founder Stowaway
@chelsa @rrhoover oh man that is so true. It is kind of magical the momentum that grows as you go from huh could we do this, to huh we are doing this, to huh someone sees the major opportunity we do and want to fund it for the upside, to a couple hundred people that are not our friends bought this to WHOA THOUSANDS OF WOMEN ARE BUYING SHIT to oh wow we can really scale this beast!
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
Thanks for doing this!
What are your favourite books :)
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Chelsa Crowley
@chelsa · Co-Founder, CCO Stowaway Cosmetics
@bentossell ha....well lately Julie and I have read (and re-read) Ben Horowitz's The Hard Thing About Hard Things :)
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Chelsa Crowley
@chelsa · Co-Founder, CCO Stowaway Cosmetics
@chelsa @bentossell to be clear, I don't think that is my favorite book...i sadly haven't picked up my kindle since I started the Stowaway journey!
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Julie Fredrickson
@almostmedia · CEO & Co-Founder Stowaway
@chelsa @bentossell I actually HATED Hard Things because I found it really fucking cloying that he used the feminine pronoun all the way through it because lets be real they ain't funding that many women. There are no REAL women heros in that book. They are bit players and wives. That said it's a fucking terrific book, I read it and I cried and I really resonated as I'm so a wartime get shit done CEO. . But for me the shit I read is science fiction. And I read a ton of it. Honestly a huge chunk of my motivation for Stowaway comes from wanting to make women's lives easier. Because if I can add in just two minutes to a woman's day so she can do what she wants she could very well be the person that changes the world. I want to be off this rock. I want to go to Mars. I want a space elevator. I want to live in the Belt! (I'm tearing through The Expense right now so that's why I'm obsessed). I love William Gibson, Charles Stross and Neal Stephenson.
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
What advice would you give to your younger self?
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Julie Fredrickson
@almostmedia · CEO & Co-Founder Stowaway
@bentossell it is all going to be fine? Also IT IS NOT AT ALL FINE THIS IS REALLLLLLLY FUCKING HARD. And get more sleep. Go to the gym. Wear sunscreen? The usual.
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Chelsa Crowley
@chelsa · Co-Founder, CCO Stowaway Cosmetics
@bentossell being embarrassed isn't the worse thing in the world which ties into (and though its easier said than done) don't care about what others think of you.
Bryan Takata
@btakata · Director, e-BI.com, China Mfg Services
How important is packaging when you are not bricks and mortar? Do you have to work even harder because the box opening experience is more important?
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Chelsa Crowley
@chelsa · Co-Founder, CCO Stowaway Cosmetics
@btakata its 100000000000x more important. Making something that you have to sell visually online and showcasing what you need to get across to your consumer is a really hard thing to do. For us, we want to show that we are a luxury, premium product and that we don't follow the rules of the beauty industry (who cares about shiny black or pink ugly packaging?! we are not barbie dolls). Women have taste and want beautiful products that doesn't make them feel like teenagers pulling out of their handbags to use in public. Luckily we nailed the packaging (not to toot our own horns or anything) because we have received 2 awards on it so far -- and we're not even a year old yet...ok, ok, tooting our horn just a little bit.
Lukas Fittl
@lukasfittl · Product Hunt
@almostmedia @chelsa Thanks for taking the time for a LIVE Chat!
How do you approach the mobile ecommerce space - do a significant amount of customers buy from Stowaway on their mobile phones?
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Julie Fredrickson
@almostmedia · CEO & Co-Founder Stowaway
@lukasfittl so our mobile purchasing is a work in progress (though we do the usual responsive think mobile yadayada) but as we move into being a service that women rely on for replenishment I expect mobile to take on a huge significance for us as our mission is to make women's lives easier.
Arpit Gupta
@arpitgupta · Product Manager
@almostmedia what are some good conferences/events that you have attended and recommend the producthunt community to attend?
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Julie Fredrickson
@almostmedia · CEO & Co-Founder Stowaway
@arpitgupta I am really excited about a retail conference I'm attending in May called ShopTalk (http://www.shoptalk.com/) as I think its going to really cover the future of retail in a broad way. That said in my early days @paddycosgrave's F.ounders was really transformative for me. Say what you will be about Web Summit but I think he does a good job even though I'm on his ass constantly about having more women involved and visible. I also love love love @Jason's work with LAUNCH. Scale was super valuable to me as I learned a ton and I think people learned some neat tricks of the trade from me.
Arpit Gupta
@arpitgupta · Product Manager
@almostmedia What are your top worries/challenges related to Stowaway cosmetics?
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Julie Fredrickson
@almostmedia · CEO & Co-Founder Stowaway
@arpitgupta I don't really worry about the existing conglomerates. They are slow and the second they validate the market by coming in (think Mcdonalds trying to do premium coffee skyrocketing Starbuck's value) we have a lot of room to maneuver. To be brutally honest I worry about finding the right venture partners to continue our growth. This is a problem women are intimately familiar with but men not as much. And finding a partner (though we currently have amazing investors like Metamorphic, Gary V, Jason Calacanis) that really sees our vision and see the upside is going to take careful diligence and work as we need someone really is willing to dig into the problem and get excited by it and wants to take this journey with us because its a huge market that is being underserved. There are so few multibillion dollar markets left to be disrupted by technology (Gag on that word but you take my meaning) and cosmetics is one of them. So someone that is like DAMN that's a problem worth solving and if we rock it out we are going to make money money money.