FAB Cross European webinar. The conversation with Female founders and investors.
Scaling in Europe and From Europe. Sept 2021. Paris. Madrid. Berlin. London.
Hosted by Fabienne Sebahoun (founder in beauty and woman in science) in Paris, with Cayetana Hurtado @ Balderton capital, and our favorite chapter leaders and founders Gabriela Salord (Rowse Beauty), Isabelle Rabier (Jolimoi), Elnura Ashimova (Relove Cosmetics), Nidhima Kohli (Beautymatchingengine solution).
Let’s come back to the takeaway. Thank you to our guest speakers and attendees for asking live questions!
🚀 What are the tools/ steps to take to grow in Europe? Take good care of your partners in business!
“Grow organically via Instagram, partner with influencers by not paying them but sending them freebies, and then see the butterfly effect. It helps us create a community around your values.” Gabriela
“We Entered new markets organically by doing lots of partnerships with communities from apps like Sweat coin and Agora world. Think outside the box and get your number of customers increasing.” Elnura
“The way to get into many retailers is via differentiation. Being organic and vegan now is not enough. Meet the people you want to pitch to at events. Give them goodie bags. Send it by post to their office. Go via brokers/ distributors for startup brands. Have a key USP and make it easier for the retailer to sell your products.” Nidhima
📈Should we bootstrap or fundraise? Keep your North Star! “1st thing about the type of business you want to create. Do you want to fundraise or not really? If you fundraise you also get the network effect, you also get to hire great talent and grow faster. What investors look for are true differentiation/ USPs and this can be in terms of product or service, business model and community.” Cayetana
“We 1st bootstrapped. And did it all ourselves first by trying products on different people and collecting collection feedback. We learned a lot. And once we had the learnings, we knew what we had to build in tech to manage a pyramid structure and only then we went and raised. The bootstrap phase also allowed us to build relationships with brands.” Isabelle
🛍How do you handle logistics and keep cost down? Be smart…
“Working with Shopify plugins got a bit expensive so it was better to pay a person to do ourselves and pay for storage. However, we realized the other solutions had better deals with DHL due to scale so we try to counteract this extra delivery cost by increasing their AOV by selling more routines and bundles.” Gabriela
“We hired 2 different contractors. 1 for packing and packing and 1 for delivery and shipping, so you can get the latter cheaper as you scale.”Isabelle
✨⚡️💪How do you grow an enterprise sales business quickly? Network! And yes, cold emails can work…
“Go through your personal contacts, join communities like FAB to build relevant network, apply in accelerators and competition to be in front of the right audience and send out blast emails because even if that is not always received greatly, for the companies that need your service they will respond asap.”Nidhima
🤓Is it difficult to raise as a female founder? Yes, even if getting better.
“It used to be much more difficult to pitch about ‘feminine products (yoga, skincare, femtech) a few years to mostly male investors. There is a shift happening, and those topics are becoming standard. There are certainly differences in how female /male founders pitch, but don’t get too caught in it, and don’t be afraid to pitch your idea.” Elnura
“Use your strengths female leaders and entrepreneurs. We have unfair advantages that male founders don’t have, including a deep and intimate knowledge of the market. “ Isabelle
As a reminder, only 2% of the funds go to female-founded companies. There is still room for improvement, even if we are happy to see IPOs, with Honest Company founded by Jessica Alba, Olaplex, Poshmark with past guest speaker Tracy Sun as a co-founder….
🙌 Join the community. We are now 10,000 founders in 15 chapters in America, Asia, and Europe of course!
As Nidhima was suggesting, join the next conversations, don’t miss the replay, and be a subscriber to our free quarterly newsletter.
https://www.beautytechcommunity.com
We believe in the “pay it forward culture”.💚💙 We believe we are stronger together, sharing best practices and learnings, expanding our network, building bridges between ecosystems.
Soon it will so important to scale globally🌍🌎🌏 in the first 3 years of growth for companies.
Talk to you soon!
Nidhima, Elnura, Fabienne, Isabelle, and Gabriela.
