On this 72nd episode of The E-Comm Show, our host, and BlueTuskr CEO Andrew Maff is with Joline Nehoray of Beverly Hills Lingerie, a streetwear lingerie brand located in the heart of Los Angeles. Joline and her sister Celine, co-founded a successful and very niched brand in a highly saturated market using word-of-mouth marketing, social networking, and pop-up events to scale their business without heavily relying on paid advertising.
Learn more about how these two sisters and cofounders made themselves their own target audience and showcased themselves as the brand story.
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Andrew Maff and Joline Nehoray Nazarian
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Joline Nehoray Nazarian
Celine and Joline launched Beverly Hills Lingerie in September 2018 when we noticed a gap in the “streetwear” lingerie industry with a mission to redefine lingerie: reshape the way the world wears, thinks, & feels about lingerie. While Celine had just graduated from USC and was thinking of a business idea almost daily, Joline was a freshman studying pre-med at USC scouting through her own closet for lace bodysuits and bralettes to wear to the next fraternity party or out to a nightclub, while noticing other girls trying to do the same. However: only the brave and bold would buy something meant for the bedroom and take it to the streets. Beverly Hills Lingerie was built to blur these lines and merge this gap. Beverly Hills Lingerie encourages and inspires girls to confidently wear their lingerie in multiple ways. They style our carefully designed products as outerwear, nightwear, clubwear, sleepwear, loungewear, and beyond, being the first lingerie brand in the market to directly market our trademarked tagline “lingerie for a night in… or a night out.”
Transcript:
00:02
Once you tell a friend to bring a friend to bring a friend, and kind of just make the event as appealing as possible, you've got yourself, guests, with
00:11
Hey everyone, this is Nezar Akeel from MaxPro. Hi, I'm Linda and I'm Paul and we're the Love and Pebble. Hi, this is Lopa van der Merch from Rasa you're listening to and you're listening and you are listening to The E-Comm Show
00:31
Welcome to The E-Comm Show, presented by BlueTuskr, the number one place to hear the inside scoop from other ecommerce experts. They share their secrets on how they scaled their business and are now living the dream. Now, here's your host,
00:49
Andrew Maff. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the E comm. Show. I'm your host Andrew Maff. And today I'm joined by the amazing Joline Nehoray of Beverly Hills Lingerie, Joline, how are you doing?
01:00
So much for having me Andrew doing well, son is finally back out in LA this weekend. And this week, so excited to chat with you excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
01:12
Beautiful. Yes, as of the moment of this recording, you guys are finally clean and clear of the countless days of rain you had Right?
01:22
Exactly. La storm.
01:25
No fun. The one time you guys get them. But obviously very appreciative of you joining us today, super excited for this one and have obviously been really into your story really excited to get into it. I like to always start off with the stereotypical approach and just kind of allow you to give us a little bit of your background, where you started, and where you're at. And we can kind of go from there.
01:46
Definitely, I'll take you way back to the beginning. I'm 24. Now I was 17 at the time when we came up with the idea of the business or it was kind of brought on to us. And I can try to make this quick. But forgive me if it's not. I went to USC as a pre-med student. And I switched my majors four or five times psychology, gerontology, I tried three at the Keck School of Medicine. It wasn't for me, but I didn't know what was for me. And my sister had just graduated from USC at the time in communications and a minor in entrepreneurship. And she knew no matter what she was going to be an entrepreneur, it wasn't about the idea. It was about the lifestyle that she wanted the job that she wanted the like, passion, and desire, she wanted to fill in herself. So she was fresh out of college. She's five years older, she's 29, she was fresh out of college, kind of just trying to come up with ideas trying to problem solve, fill the white spaces, in our lifestyles in our lives. Because obviously being your target consumer is one of the most ideal things for an entrepreneur. And it was my dad actually who had and he's a corporate tax accountant. So he has nothing to do with this industry at all. It was him who was like, there is something that is not taken. And it's called Beverly Hills lingerie. And even though you too have no fashion expertise or experience or background, I believe in you as an entrepreneur, I will support you and help you launch this business. So we worked for a year and a half before launching just learning more about the industry. We went to every trade show, la Vegas, New York, and Hong Kong, just trying to learn more by talking to people, or about manufacturing, learning wholesale marketing branding. And that was where it was easier for us because we were in our 20s and, or me in my teens and at USC. There was a time when every girl was trying to wear a lace bodysuit or lace bra let with jeans or you know leather pants and heels and take it to the club. And there wasn't exactly a brand that marketed that. It was really like if you were bold and you had style, you know what to do with your Victoria's Secret bodysuit. So we were looking to fill that whitespace and personally, I don't think I would thrive as an entrepreneur who didn't have such a niche we ran with that niche and we trademarked the tagline lingerie for a night and or a night out. And that's kind of our brand value and mission to encourage girls and show them how to style lingerie for the night in and night out.
04:39
Beautiful. And so your sister Celine, who obviously wasn't able to join us today. So you guys start this brand you get it off the ground, your dad supported you and by the way, I'm sure it's got your books flawless and Exactly. That's always great to have a tax account in the family. With so you launching this brand, so One of the things I know I want to touch on because I've done this before as well as working with family is always interesting. What is it like working with your sister and how to have you kind of delegated roles who kind of oversees what
05:14
totally two parts the first part I would say really quickly is that delegating roles became very, very natural. For us, it was kind of just like strengths and weaknesses and whoever, whoever kind of took over a task first and it was so, so natural, the way it came about, obviously, I'm Gen Z, I'm a bit younger, so Tik Tok and Instagram were like a little bit easier for me to spread my wings in. And then, and for her, she's
05:42
gonna be offended by that comment.
05:45
Though she owns it, she's like my sister's Gen Z, I'm Asian. Like, she teaches me everything I know about social media, which by the way, she's not, it's just so funny how I think I'm so much more. So much more, you know, adverse with it. So that's where that came about. And she naturally when I was still at USC, naturally, she was kind of doing the legal stuff, setting up the business, and meeting foyers and all that stuff. So that was more her realm. In terms of working together, it's definitely not easy. And it requires effort, just like any relationship. And I say that I just got married. And I say that the same in a marriage or a friendship or, you know, whatever, whatever relationship that you care about, it takes effort. And I count that as a full-time job, I count my marriage is a full-time job, I count my relationship with my sister as a full-time job in our full-time job. So, we learned a lot about each other, we started as best friends, and we would do anything for each other, the thing that I think was most important for us, and still is the most important key element in being good business partners, is knowing our sisterhood, like supersedes all, it's kind of superior to anything money related, or, you know, I'd have to say business related because family is all you have. And we knew that going into it. I think that was the only reason that my parents and my dad especially were comfortable letting us do this together. Going into business with your family, I think the relationship is the most important thing to have first, the foundation. And then to start a business and I am around a lot of sibling entrepreneurs in LA and a lot of them kind of think that the relationship will be formed or even solved while working together. But that doesn't even make sense. Because there's not that much time to like, you know, start the foundation of a relationship while working. But definitely, the effort is daily maintenance. Yeah.
07:49
So you mentioned, you know, you being on the Gen Z side, you're, you know, you've got the Tick Tock Instagram side of stuff down. So is most of your role primarily on the marketing side and her role primarily on the operational side? Or is there still kind of some overlap?
08:04
There's still so much overlap, which I really like at the moment. I don't know when that's going to change. But I really like that. In our fourth year of business, we're still running things by each other, doing things together, getting ideas, and collaborating together. I think, primarily, I'd say again, like, as I said, she's more legal. And I'm maybe more like trend kasseri, I'd follow trends more, and I'd bring them to our attention. I tried to incorporate them into the brands. Those are the main differences.
08:37
So on the marketing side, one of the things I was very excited to talk to you about is you're about four years into the business, as you mentioned, and you barely have touched anything from an advertising perspective. And so then the other thing that's also very interesting is normally when that's the case, I talked to someone they're like, Yeah, we had a big social media presence. And we did all this and all that, which I'm sure you guys did as well. But you took more of a different, like offline guerilla approach of actually going to events and you know, clubs and stuff within the LA area. Am I right?
09:11
Exactly, yes. We just thought that growing a community growing a loyal fan base, kind of per location would be the best way to build a long-lasting, like classic brands. And there are so many overnight success stories that you see. And they really came about on Instagram and social media and I have nothing against that at all. But it's hard to sustain and maintain a brand like that when there's no sense of community and having been born and raised in LA or in Beverly Hills to be more specific and have a brand whose name includes Beverly Hills and having just a close network of family and friends is so much more valuable than strangers who may forget about you or move on to the next big thing that catches their attention. Then on Instagram, for example, and I think both are necessary, but that is where we felt was our strongest suit to start in the beginning with throwing events and like I said, or like you said, guerilla marketing, offline marketing.
10:16
And so were you sponsoring these events? Or were you kind of just doing almost like an influencer approach where you know, people who are going to like a certain club that night or something, you're like, hey, let me dress you. And then tell people where you got this.
10:28
All of it every avenue that we could reach we would, a lot of it was hosting events, NARS makeup brands, they have a boutique on Melrose Avenue, they invited us to do like a holiday pop up there same as bash from Paris, they're on Beverly Drive, and Beverly Hills have invited us to do like Valentine's pop-ups there. When we were launching into Fred Segal on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, we had the idea to throw a party there and get a DJ and have, you know, our network of FMB sponsors host as well. And we had an awesome guest list. BFA-covered images, the influencers were able to take anything off the rack and dress and take it home as a gift. So that was like one idea and things like that were actually really helpful for us really beneficial for us in the beginning. And they still are, but some things that I think some entrepreneurs or brand owners will kind of wait to do, they'll kind of wait, you know, I'll do that when I get bigger. I'll do that when I get bigger, I can fill a room of 200 people once I have enough following and I'm confident enough that people show up. But once you tell a friend to bring a friend to bring a friend, and kind of just make the event as appealing as possible. You've got yourself a guest list we had we've had a couple of events, actually one with a dating app in Beverly Hills, and it had like a 700-person line wrapping around the block. And another event actually yeah, it was Valentine's Day, we rent out a really hot club from friends that opened up in West Hollywood, and there were like 550 people waiting outside or something. I mean, these are the things that we love about the brand and being our own target consumer and being young, you know, sisters. So we also, again, to to another No, actually, we'd like to be the face of the brand, we'd like to have been the narrative. A whole sister founders story, I think, is really rare and special. Yeah,
12:31
you know, your approach is very, it's very commendable, you find a lot of people that primarily sell online, they launch a product, and they usually revert immediately to social media paid advertising and SEO like one of the traditional approaches. And in my opinion, it's because they're partially afraid of what the market is going to say. And they want to be able to hide if that fails. Total, whether that's true or not, it could just be my horrible opinion on it. At the same time, if you guys went out there, and you immediately put your face to the brand and immediately started like this product is mine, I'd like you to wear it, you know, and really started pushing it before you even did more of the traditional type of, you know, approach a lot of the stuff I had mentioned, which is awesome. And so you would also mention, you know that you guys are just now kind of diving into a little bit of paid ads, what have you started to map out what your marketing approach is going to be from more of a traditional like digital side to get more awareness outside of LA?
13:38
Totally. And we have dabbled with digital ads. Actually, I'll give you our whole experience with it. We at the second year of our business, and we wanted to hire an agency to handle these things. At first, we were able to do small little amounts on Shopify is awesome for marketing, they'll allow you to like you know, with credit card details, just start a campaign on Google ads, Pinterest, Facebook, and even Instagram, it was really easy to boost posts at that time in like 2018 2019. And once we started going out interviewing agencies to hire it didn't feel that different from doing the marketing yourself once you learn you learn how to use Facebook manager. The ads manager didn't feel too different. So we had we interviewed a ton of places we learned a lot about digital ads, digital paid ads, and we're working now with one that we love and hopefully, we'll get out our digital ads soon and that'll be our journey moving forward and our marketing campaign moving forward.
14:51
Nice. Have you considered going in the influencer direction?
14:55
We did actually that was with in combination With events with offline marketing, whatever, whatever else we did, that was, that was something we did a lot. But something interesting also, now that we're touching on influencers when we had a whole network of influencers, social media stars in LA, we were like, why would we ship to every single one of them just to have a story tag, because it wasn't like, we could use the content, as we're a lingerie company, we weren't really happy with all of the content they would produce, and we couldn't really use it. And we have the same problem with UGC. So we were like, Why don't we have events, we're gonna get the same amount of story tags, if not plenty more than we would gift to these to these girls. So that was another thing that I forgot to touch on about the events, we had so many photo moments, so many story tags, so much social media, like business and presence, and at that time, so that was really helpful. What was I forgetting your question that I'm supposed to be?
16:05
Actually, no, it's actually a really good point. I didn't even think about that. I mean, you live in the influencer marketing capital of the world, I assume. And so to ship it out, to ship it out it actually I guess that's kind of a good point. It's like why go to them if you can just have them come to you? So
16:24
why ship it out? Because the only thing we wanted was a story tag. And I know some other brands. I love influencer content. I mean, I loved UGC, as well. But why not have these amazing photo moments and then have an even cooler story to show when they're posting and tagging the sister founders? And it's at this really cool nightclub. And it's for Valentine's Day and the mood you really feel like you grasp the brand theme better in those photos than you would in, you know, just a basic unboxing or something like that.
17:03
It's a very good point. One of the things I was interested in because it's always interesting when I speak to you know, an entrepreneur that's younger, you know, you're your sister's a little closer to my age, you're a little younger, what's the what do you think the goal is with the business? Do you guys have a plan of like, you know, one day we want to exit it? Or is the thought of just like, we're just going to take this thing as far as it can go? Have you had that conversation yet?
17:29
Yes, yes, that's definitely the idea just to take it as far as we can go. Where we see where we see fit. And the lingerie industry is a classic, of course, it's a $40 billion dollar industry annually. So it's not going anywhere like people aren't going to stop needing underwear at some point or stop wearing these kinds of things. It's just a closet staple. So we'll just take it as far as we can. I'm hoping to be in global and retail stores. So tons of people can discover our products. And I also think that there's a big gap in the lingerie industry of trendy, cool, sexy, but also affordable, because there's your La Perla and Asian provocateur, but their robes run up to like $1,500, for example. And then there are some that are right, totally. And then there are just some that are, of course, lower quality, but lower price points and maybe a bit trashy. And there are some girls that want affordable luxury and want to feel sexy and classy in their items but don't know where to go. And we're hoping to fill that white space. And we just had actually, a distributor tell us that they felt the same about our brands and how they have Calvin Klein and Fleur De Mol and some of these other big brands, but they don't fill the white space that we're necessarily trying to fill.
18:52
How many retail stores are you in right now?
18:55
Right now we're just on some global online platforms, hoping to expand into more I think we're on like seven or eight. And we dropped.
19:05
That makes sense. Have you thought about what that business model looks like if you go retail versus if you stay more DTC like you are now?
19:14
Yes, and I think lingerie is such an intimate purchase. It's very emotional people love feeling it feeling the quality feeling the fabric, the material because it's so close to their body. And this is what I've heard from several consumers as well. So I think retail is always a good route for our industry for our brands. But I don't think DTC shopping is going anywhere. So just hoping to hit and stay at all avenues that we can all channels. The only thing that I don't think we'll ever do is open our own brick-and-mortar store.
19:49
You don't think you'll do it?
19:50
I don't think we would do that.
19:52
Yeah. Have you done I guess technically your events are kind of like pop-up right? So those are Your popups
20:01
totally saw a lot of those events as well. Yeah,
20:05
your response on why you would go to retail, you know, makes a lot of sense. I never thought of it that way. Every time I talk to someone about going to retail, it's a different beast. It's a different ballgame of how you gotta get people to, you know, to the stores. And if they don't rebuy it becomes a whole problem. And then just finding good distributors, there's a whole nightmare, DTC tends to be a little bit easier. But similar to what I had said before is like, you know, you tend to get the E-commerce sellers that like to just hide behind their computers and sell stuff all day. It's, and I would imagine in I know, in apparel, this is the case in lingerie specifically, I'm not sure but like, you would probably have fewer returns retail than you would do to see. Right.
20:48
I agree. Totally. Once I tried on until I mean, there's, there's no point to come back and return it. If you've tried it on you liked it enough to buy it. So that's a good point to point.
21:01
What about like the marketplaces for apparel? It's always a very interesting question. Like, would you bother going the Amazon route? I would assume not like the Walmart route. But like any other like type of marketplace where, you know, it tends to be, you know, the niche products aren't exactly always available.
21:19
Totally. I wouldn't mind making a sub-collection for these big retailers. Actually, I think target would love something like this. Just like an affordable luxury, which is how we brand it. It would be definitely like a sub-collection. But yeah, definitely even something for Amazon. selling on Amazon doesn't hurt at all.
21:43
Nice. That would be very interesting. It's always your category I had a couple of people on the show where it's like, you know, its underwear. We've had sex toys before. We've had like, the size, the different sides of things where it's like, you're in that weird. You could go the direct DTC route, you could go retail, it's sometimes you know, sometimes there are platforms that don't let you on there. And then sometimes there are others where you're supposed to be on there and you shouldn't need to be like, it's very interesting, you know, it's a very interesting niche that you guys have started to carve out. But I know you're super busy. Joline, thank you so much for being on the show. Obviously. Please send Celine our regards we were bummed. We couldn't have the duo. But thank you so much. I'd love to give you an opportunity here. Let everyone know where they can find out more about you and obviously more about Beverly Hills Lingerie.
22:35
Definitely. We are just at Beverly Hills Lingerie on Instagram, beverlyhillslingerie.com. We love messages, opinions, suggestions, comments, and questions, so please, please send some through. You'll find us shopping BHL on Twitter and Facebook and a few platforms like Vera shop, Garmin, Tory, Wolf, and badger. Thank you for listening.
23:01
Thank you for being on the show. Really appreciate it. Everyone who tuned in, of course, thank you as well. Please make sure you do the usual rate review, subscribe to all that fun stuff on whichever podcast platform you want, or head over to theecommshow.com to watch all of our previous episodes. But as usual, thank you all for joining Joline thank you as well. And everyone we'll see you all next time. Have a go.
23:22
Thank you for tuning in to The E-Commm Show
23:24
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