How do you sell something that customers can’t see? On this 121st episode of The E-Comm Show, Andrew Maff interviews Jennifer McKay, Founder and CEO of DefineMe. For nearly a decade, DefineMe has been shaking up the fragrance world with strong principles and clean, cruelty-free scents — and partnering with heavyweights like Disney and Mattel along the way.
In this episode, Jennifer will discuss the unique challenges of selling a product that can’t be truly experienced online. She’ll also highlight some of the solutions her team have cooked up, including tapping trusted influencers and making it easy for potential customers to get ahold of product samples. If you’re interested in transforming e-commerce hurdles into opportunities, don’t miss this episode!
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Andrew Maff and Jennifer McKay Newton
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Jennifer McKay Newton
Jennifer is the visionary Founder and CEO behind DefineMe and the DefineMe Creative Studio. Launched in 2015, DefineMe is a conscious perfume brand with a clear mission: to empower self-worth and confidence through scent. The journey began when Jennifer witnessed her daughter's struggles and recognized similar challenges within herself and others. With an understanding of how connected scent is to emotional wellness, she was inspired to use perfume as a vehicle for good. The DefineMe Creative Studio is an arm of DefineMe where we collaborate to create products with brands like Mattel's Barbie perfume and the Disney Princess Line of Perfumes.
0:01
Hello, everyone and welcome to another episode of the Ecom show.
0:05
I'm your host as usual Andrew Maf.
0:06
And today I am joined by the amazing Jennifer mckay Newton, who is the founder and CEO of to find me, Jennifer.
0:12
How are you doing?
0:13
Ready for a good show?
0:14
I'm good.
0:15
Yeah, let's, let's do this beautiful, obviously, really appreciate you.
0:20
joining me today.
0:22
Love to do the very stereotypical thing kind of pretend that no one knows who you are and if you want to just give us a little bit of background of who you are a little bit about to find me and we'll take it from there.
0:30
Ok.
0:31
Yeah.
0:31
Sure.
0:32
So I'm Jennifer mckay Newton.
0:34
I'm the CEO and founder of to find me.
0:38
I'm also the founder of Define Me Creative Studio.
0:42
To find me is a perfume brand.
0:47
We create fragrances.
0:49
They're natural clean vegan cruelty free.
0:52
And really, our secret sauce is about creating wellness through scent.
1:00
So that's we launched in 2015 and that's how we started.
1:05
I, I was wanted to come up with something that made the world a better place if you will.
1:12
I have that entrepreneurial kind of mindset and spirit.
1:15
And I chose sense because I saw a direct connection between when you smell something.
1:23
it goes directly to your limbic system of your brain and which is the emotional center of your brain.
1:29
And so there is really this strong connection between scent and wellness and well being.
1:34
And I was like, you know, I'm in this and I had never created a perfume.
1:42
I didn't know anything about the beauty business.
1:45
So I was sort of a little crazy at the time looking back, I was told I was crazy at the time.
1:54
But we've been in this for, we're going into our ninth year now and you know, we have our own brands.
2:01
We have collaboration with Mattel, we do the Barbie Fragrance, we collaborate with Disney.
2:07
So we do all the the princess fragrances and we work with some of the largest retailers and distributors in the world.
2:15
So, and we have a website of course.
2:20
And so yeah, that's really kind of like the, the the big story of who I am and what, what I do.
2:28
Wow.
2:29
So before we dive into the define me specific side, can you tell me a little bit about what define me creative studio was?
2:37
So to find me, creative Studio is an offshoot of our brand.
2:42
it's a place where we place all of our collaborations, whether it be other companies, designers influencers and things like that.
2:55
So it's kind of just like our place to put all of these side projects.
3:01
The side projects started coming organically and when I mean, side projects, I mean, working with Disney and Mattel and not our brand and we needed to in business, a lot of times things happen organically and you kind of have to follow them, I believe as a, you know, especially with the way businesses these days and companies and just the uncertainty you know, going through COVID and things like that.
3:32
So it's really, for us, it was important to look and really kind of follow and lead where the money was essentially And the revenue was going and so we wanted to just have something that was really sort of this organized place to keep all of our, our creative projects and collaboration.
3:52
So we launched the Define Define Me Creative Studio officially last year.
3:59
And it's been getting busier.
4:02
So that's exciting.
4:04
Wow.
4:05
So would you I guess I know I don't wanna get too deep into the specifics around Disney Mattel because they scare me, say the wrong thing and I'll be on their hit list.
4:19
Would you, would you say so is it kind of like a, a white labeling for the most part?
4:25
Like obviously, you know, you're creating the fragrances and the scents and then they're packaging it for Barbie the Princess.
4:31
Is that kind of thing, correct.
4:32
Well, we have, yeah, we have different setups with different companies.
4:38
Mittel, for example, is the straight license Disney is a little bit different.
4:42
We also work with influencers and those are more of partnerships if you will.
4:48
So we're really about, you know, coming up with creative solutions that work for both sides of the, of every, you know, both sides of the, the the, the deal.
5:02
So we're just really kind of like open to, you know, making things work for everybody and seeing what we could do creatively to bring fragrant more fragrances into the world.
5:12
Yeah, that is a very cool concept and it says a lot about to find me, you know, the original aspect of it because it, it clearly did so well and picked up so much that you had so much people reaching out to you that you had to like spin off an aspect of the company just to be able to fulfill that kind of thing, which is very cool.
5:31
The so the define me side fragrance has to be one of the most complicated spaces because not only is it wildly competitive, but, you know, scent can theoretically be subjective.
5:47
And then, you know, at at least from an ecommerce perspective, you can't smell it until you have it in your hands.
5:53
So, how are you, how did you get the product out there?
5:56
How are you currently marketing it?
5:58
Like, what's been that approach so far?
6:02
Yeah.
6:02
You know, when I started, I didn't really think that through like, how do you sell fragrance online?
6:10
That was the big million dollar question really?
6:14
And you know, like anything, you know, it's about connecting to your consumers.
6:25
sampling is really important.
6:27
The other thing is creating visuals that connect to the scent themselves, like using notes and things like that.
6:38
So we have a lot of tricks up our sleeves in how we communicate.
6:44
the way a scent smells, we really connected to how it would feel like, you know, something like one of our fragrances rami, for example, we say it, it, it feels like wearing a cashmere sweater, you know, so kind of really evoking the feeling of the scent and you would be surprised at how many people do blind buy fragrances online without smelling them first, which is great for us.
7:12
But again, we also have a way that people can purchase the fragrances online and purchase little samples for like $5 which is the cost of, you know, including shipping.
7:22
So it's not that big of a an expense for people to try it.
7:26
But there's also we work with a lot of influencers that are great at describing fragrances and people trust their opinions.
7:36
So we do things that way as well, but it is, it's been very interesting but I think, you know, people really can get behind us as a brand.
7:47
You know, we, and this is part of the whole bigger picture of why we, I think, I believe our company was attractive to the likes of Disney and Mattel is just like what we believe in, you know, where women founded women owned, we support girls education.
8:06
We are vegan cruelty free.
8:08
We make clean fragrances.
8:09
I always wanted to make something that I would wear that.
8:12
I would let my daughter wear that.
8:13
I would let my sister and my best friend wear.
8:16
And so we really pride ourselves in our ingredients.
8:19
We're also sustainable.
8:21
We produce everything locally in California where we're based.
8:26
And so I think as any other product, the consumer product goods, I think people really want to know where they're buying things from and that, you know, you create this trust within your customers.
8:42
And I think that's what we've done really well over the years, I always call us the tortoise and the hair because you see some of their companies just like take off and, and pop up.
8:51
But we're, we've kind of been gradual and slow and we're gradually building this, kind of really interesting brand that I think, really reflects the times happening right now and with business in general.
9:08
so, you know, I'm, I'm proud of what we've done so far.
9:12
It's been kind of a wild ride.
9:14
But to answer your question is just being super creative about describing the sense the notes connecting to our customers, you know, through ourselves and through our influencers and and a lot of just email marketing, S MS marketing and things like that from the marketing perspective, is it, do you find that the influencers are the ones that are really helping spread that message a lot like is that where a majority of, you know, either your reach or your revenue is coming from or is it a different channel?
9:51
Yeah, you know, attributing direct revenue from influencers is tricky unless you know, a sale.
10:00
So, I think it's honestly, I think it's a combination of everything I think, you know, email marketing is still really big for us.
10:10
S MS is also really important.
10:15
We've been doing it for now, I believe two years.
10:21
and just making sure that our messaging is helpful and interesting and not annoying and overwhelming.
10:32
And of course, our email is, is a big, you know, source of our revenue.
10:37
as well as the influencers, it's kind of just this big package deal and it really just kind of all has to, you have to have everything in line and also having it all cohesive is really important.
10:48
, but there's not one thing that, that is it for us.
10:53
I think it's, it's all of the things together.
10:57
Yeah.
10:57
Well, that's, I mean, that's, you're, you're speaking my language because I preach that kind of stuff all the time, especially with marketing.
11:04
Everything is so it overlaps with everything your influencers are going to affect your email marketing, which will affect your paid advertising.
11:11
Like there's so much overlapping that, you know, tracking attributing revenue to anything, especially influencers is very challenging.
11:19
Are you obviously, you know, you mentioned, you know, you're in retail, you have all the distributors you sell on your website.
11:23
Are you selling anywhere else online?
11:25
Are you in any of the marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, ebay?
11:28
That kind of stuff we are on Amazon.
11:31
Yes, we're in the Amazon Beauty.
11:33
We've seen really steady great growth, I believe December was our biggest month ever.
11:43
I believe we're up like 66% from 2022.
11:48
So I love that momentum.
11:51
You know, Amazon can be a challenge.
11:54
We've been able to squeeze our margins out to make it really worth it, but it's been a challenge and I think you just have to really have the right team set up in place that knows what they're doing and do everything you can to shoot for that two X plus on R US.
12:16
And I think with that cut those kind of numbers, they see us growing.
12:19
But I'm looking forward to one of my plans this year is to really grow our Amazon account month over month.
12:27
So we're, we're excited and so far so good.
12:30
January is usually a slow month.
12:31
, you know, you hit that kind of like after the holidays, you hit that real low, but we're still kind of, you know, doing well on Amazon this month.
12:40
I just had my meeting with my marketing team before this call and we're at like a 2.76 on Ro us for perfume on Amazon.
12:50
So I'm happy about that.
12:51
Could have something to do with us working with Barbie.
12:55
It has a lot to do with us working with Barbie name recognition.
13:01
But I, you know, I think Amazon, there's just so much growth potential there and I think it's for us, it's definitely a focus for 2024.
13:12
There's, I always find with Amazon for people that, you know, have their own website as well.
13:18
There's two different mindsets.
13:20
There's one where it's, I have my Amazon business and then I have my website business and they're treated completely separately and then you have others where it's more of Amazon is treated as a customer acquisition channel and you're leveraging it really more to direct people to eventually get to the website.
13:37
And, you know, sometimes you have like subscriptions in place or recurring orders of any kind like that kind of thing.
13:42
What's, what's your approach with it so far?
13:45
It's both ok.
13:49
You know, you know, we, of course we want the customers to purchase the product on Amazon and then say, you know, love it and then go, who is this company?
14:01
And then come to us and then become part of our family if you will.
14:05
, but I understand the convenience of Amazon.
14:09
I shop on Amazon sometimes.
14:11
I'm like, oh, I want to buy it and I really do go out of my way to buy it directly from companies that I like a lot.
14:19
But sometimes you're just buying, you know, your dog food on Amazon and you're like, I really, oh, yeah, I need that, you know, I need the makeup or I need the hair product or I need the fragrance and so I understand the convenience.
14:32
So it's a little bit of both.
14:33
If we're able to, you know, offer the same similar experience on Amazon,, that we do on our own website, then I'm all for it.
14:45
I just want people to really get our product and fall in love with it and then want more and be more, you know, a bigger part of our, of our company.
14:53
So we will do, you know, coupons and things like that on Amazon.
14:58
But I really, we offer in general more kind of VIP attention to our customers on our website.
15:09
So they're the first to know they, they get the bigger during the holidays, they get the bigger deals.
15:15
, just because, you know, we want to appreciate them a little bit more.
15:19
, so that's, that's how we really treat Amazon.
15:23
I, I, before I was, it was all about acquisition, customer acquisition for us, but now it's like I see the value in Amazon and I see the convenience and people just want convenience a lot of times and I'm, I can respect that.
15:38
Yeah, I, I completely understand and I, I kind of iii I more or less think the same way that you're thinking like how you could see it.
15:45
It's both like it's hard, you can't just say no to Amazon, you do have the people that, you know, treat them as completely separate businesses, but there's such bleed over of, you know, sometimes you'll run tests and ramp up your, let's say Facebook ads and next thing, you know, your Amazon's doing better because people are just naturally going that way to see if you're available there.
16:03
So being able to leverage their pre-existing audience makes a obviously a lot of sense.
16:08
Do you have the your full product line ava available on Amazon or is it just like certain aspects of it?
16:15
We do.
16:17
But in truth, if something's new, for example, they're the last to get it.
16:23
We always want to make sure that our customers from our website get first dibs get, you know, again, the VIP treatment.
16:33
I, you know, I used to see Amazon in that kind of light and I was kind of like, not interested.
16:40
, but just there, it is really an important part of our business and I just calculating some of the growth that we can have, you know, month, over month, quarter, over quarter and just watching it almost like in a way, ignoring it a little bit and kind of, and then just seeing it grow organically is really interesting.
17:02
And again, anything that's growing organically, you have to pay attention to.
17:06
And the other thing that Amazon can offer us is data.
17:09
Like we can look at all of our data and we can take that data and use it on our website.
17:13
We can see what's working there and use it for our own good and for our website.
17:20
But normally watching our, you know, up until really q four of last year, our website sales were always higher than our, our revenue is always higher than our Amazon.
17:36
And now it's starting to.
17:38
So I'm kind of like, you know, as a calendar, you really have to pay attention to that.
17:44
And really see it as a tool, you know, and for me, it's like if someone purchases our product on Amazon or they purchase it on Ulta or Macy's or on our website, they're purchasing our product.
17:57
So I, you know, we, we have to pay attention to that and you have to pay attention to where your customers are shopping and you have to be where your customers are.
18:06
Otherwise, it's said they're going to buy somebody else's product.
18:09
So, exactly.
18:12
Have you,, have you dabbled in,, by, with prime at all?
18:15
Have you explored that since you're on both channels?
18:17
, if this is an Amazon specific marketing question, I can't tell you.
18:27
I don't believe so, but we're trying, we have a great team.
18:31
They're really the latest and greatest.
18:33
They're doing a great job for us.
18:36
So if there's anything new happening, I'm sure it's just a matter of time before we're doing it.
18:41
We are, we are engaging more with Amazon influencers where, you know, beauty specifically be the beauty influencers and we haven't quite, it hasn't quite been as robust as our regular influencers like our tiktok or Instagram influencers.
19:03
But I definitely believe that this should be a priority for us heading into 2024.
19:14
Yeah, that would be Amazon's creator connections that it's, it's interesting.
19:20
I've, I've seen it do.
19:21
Ok.
19:22
But I agree, like I would have anticipated it to be much better the few times that we've played with it.
19:27
And I was like, ok, we'll see what happens.
19:29
But I also know that a lot of influencers haven't, like, really caught on to it yet.
19:32
And so it's a matter of them just getting on there and then I'm sure that'll skyrocket.
19:38
The one of the other things I wanna ask you.
19:41
So the obviously, you know, we talked about the brand itself, the product itself and the sustainability behind it and the benefits behind that.
19:47
But there is a you have a nice little story behind the brand on like why you started it, that was specific to your daughter, am I right?
19:55
Yeah, so I would see well, little background.
20:01
I was an interior designer for a long time.
20:05
and I was like, I wanna do something different.
20:08
I, I went back to my design routes.
20:13
So I was studied industrial design and interior design in school.
20:17
And I was like, I'm just going to create amazing products.
20:22
And so through my first company, I had launched it was called Pure Designs for Living.
20:28
I made these boxes, there were special occasion boxes, they were for weddings and baby showers and housewarming and things like that.
20:38
And one of the products, I had one of the products within that product was a candle because it was a little kind of ceremonial box where you would write a note to the person to the baby shower or the wedding or whatever the occasion was and it was a keepsake box.
20:54
And so I ended up learning about sun through the candles and as I was working with these candles, I saw the connection again because people were like, when I light this candle, it makes me feel this way.
21:09
It makes me feel good and et cetera.
21:11
And one of the things that I saw with my daughter just, and it was like being, having kind of like the low confidence and self esteem challenges.
21:24
And I remember having the same thing when I was her age myself and also my sister and my, my friends and every woman that I knew had sort of these confidence or these negative thoughts going through your head.
21:38
And I know guys have it too because I have a son as well.
21:42
And so learning how the scent is connected to wellness and how you could put these like positive empowering inspirations within scent.
21:52
I thought this is it, this is the way that I, you know, help people in that way was to put positive intention through sense.
22:00
So some of our senses are about self love, some are about being, feeling strong, some are about being a free spirit and through the packaging and through the intentions, it's pretty clear what they're about.
22:14
And so whether you know it or not throughout the day, when you're wearing the fragrance, if you've read, if you know what the brand is, and if you've read what you're buying, the little, those little subconscious intentions are with you throughout the day.
22:29
And so that was really the, the, the reason it's just kind of help support through sense.
22:35
And, and that was that, that is how really I took this crazy journey and again, I think like Disney and Mattel and everything they saw that and they recognized that and with what we were doing.
22:53
So when we create a scent, there's always a meaning behind it.
22:56
Always a reason we're doing it.
22:57
It's not just like let's do a vanilla scent or let's do this scent.
23:01
We obviously want everything to smell good, but we always try to put something behind it.
23:05
And one of our best selling products, we have crystals infused because why not?
23:11
Right.
23:12
Let's throw some crystals into this picture.
23:16
So I love crystals and I didn't, I didn't think that I didn't know how this was going to fly.
23:22
So I took a bottle with some perfume and put crystals in it, brought it to a trade show just to kind of talk to my customers and to see what they thought.
23:31
And I would also recommend anyone doing a business to do that, talk to your customers market research, right?
23:38
And every time my, so my sales pitch was well, if you don't think the crystals, if you don't understand the metaphysical aspect of the crystals, they're just really pretty to look at.
23:50
So it's kind of a unique and they're like and 10 out of 10 times they're like, they would say no, I believe in the metaphysical and I was like, OK, I'm on to something.
23:58
And so now those are some of our best selling products, the ones with the crystals.
24:03
So that is genius.
24:06
I love that.
24:07
I gotta tell my, I didn't notice that on the side, I gotta tell my wife she would love that.
24:11
See what I mean.
24:13
And yeah, and so the crystals, for example, the Sophia Isabel fragrance is about bringing a free spirit.
24:21
It's a very warm, I call it like golden sunshine kind of fragrance.
24:25
It's citrusy and warm.
24:26
It's one of our best selling scents and we combined it with Creen, which is about, they're golden, it's abundance, they're warm, they're sunshiny.
24:35
So those two were a perfect match.
24:38
And so that's what we, that's kind of how we do everything.
24:41
And I think it's really different than, you know, just having, you know, a vegan cruelty fragrance out there being a niche brand.
24:48
We're always trying to do something deeper and kind of different.
24:53
And that's how, that's how I think that's how we've survived this long.
24:59
thinking out of the box and keeping it, keeping it kind of personal and inspiring for people.
25:06
Yeah.
25:07
Yeah, I mean, I completely agree.
25:08
It's, you know, it's, it's not very common anymore when you see, you know, a product line that's released that, that actually has a true, like meaningful story behind it.
25:21
It's always just like, hey, I released a product.
25:23
It's great.
25:24
Buy it like that's kind of it.
25:26
Whereas yours, you know, there, there's even say in certain aspects of like therapy things where they say like, hey, it's a look good, feel good.
25:33
If you're not feeling great about yourself, get up, get dressed, put on something nice, even if you're not doing anything that day to feel good.
25:39
And it's a, I could see how that would be a very similar concept of smell good, feel good.
25:44
Like it can totally line up that same way.
25:46
I love the concept.
25:47
Very cool, awesome brand.
25:50
Love it.
25:51
I don't want to take up any more of your time.
25:52
Jennifer obviously really appreciate you having on the show because I know you're super busy.
25:55
I'd love to give you the opportunity here and let you know, let everyone know where they can find out more about you and of course, more about to find me.
26:01
Yeah, sure.
26:02
So our website is to find me fragrance.com and you can see you can buy our products, check our products out there on that website and then also to find me Creative studio where you can, if you're interested in the Barbie Fragrances, you can check it out.
26:18
We're going to be launching a new fragrance.
26:20
Barbie related February 1st.
26:25
I cannot announce it yet, but we're super excited and we just launched a new crystal fragrance called Florets Rose Quartz, which is all about love just in time for Valentine's Day and that's available on our website.
26:38
So check us out, you can read about us and you can find me on linkedin, Jennifer mckay, Newton if you want to connect on linkedin.
26:47
So, yeah, per Jennifer, thank you so much for being on the show.
26:52
Obviously, everyone that tuned in.
26:53
Thank you as well.
26:54
Please make sure you do the usual thing, rate, review, subscribe all that fun stuff on whichever podcast platform you prefer or head over to the Ecommshow.com to check out all of our other previous episodes.
27:02
But as usual, thank you all for joining us and we will see you all next time.
27:05
Have a good one.