This is a podcast about digital and ecommerce, so you already know we’re big fans of the internet. It’s a portal and a tool to give you direct access to consumers, information, and communication unlike anything that’s ever existed before. And if you’re living here in 2022 and expecting to thrive as a business owner, you better be tapping into every possible resource the internet has to offer. Alli Reed has known that for more than a decade, and her company, Stratia Skincare, got its start in large part thanks to the wealth of beauty and skincare knowledge Alli tapped into to turn an interest into a side hustle and then grow it into a multi-million dollar brand.
On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, I talked to Alli about how she turned her hours on Reddit into a brand that keeps growing, and we talked about all the ways to attract customers, differentiate yourself, and what it takes to educate the consumer beyond just knowing what your brand is, but also what it stands for and how it operates. Enjoy!
Main Takeaways:
- The Reddit Goldmine: If you are looking for an engaged audience, Reddit is one of the best places on the internet to find some. But beware, not only are Redditors engaged, they are hyper-aware of any kind of inauthentic promotion or pushing of brands. When you show up on Reddit, you have to be authentic, and in return, you will see active, informed, and oftentimes helpful folks who can take your market research to another level.
- Don’t Take Our Word For It: In categories that require a bit more effort to convert customers, it’s helpful to rely on UGC and customer reviews. Rather than asking potential customers to trust you the brand, ask them to trust their peers who are singing your praises. That’s a much easier and quicker way to get someone to pull the trigger than trying to convince them just based on your marketing materials.
- You’re Not What You’re Not: There is always a rush to be the first to be certain ingredient-free. Whether it’s paraben-free, gluten-free, cruelty-free, or anything else, don’t let the marketing angle of being XYZ-thing-free be your crutch. Find a way to differentiate yourself that actually has a basis in need, science, or data rather than being the first to be “anything-free.”
For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
Key Quotes:
“Skincare really hooked me in particular because I think of makeup as art. It washes off at the end of the day. Skincare is science in that it actually can interact with and change a living organ, with your skin. I was really drawn to that. I wanted to know everything I possibly about how the skin works on a biological level, how skincare is formulated on a chemical level, how the two interact, what can I even expect my skincare to do?”
“Everything that’s available on the market, you’re basically only getting what the marketing department trickles through in terms of the actual information of the ingredients that are in it, the quality of those ingredients, how it’s formulated. At a certain point I was getting all this great research and not knowing how to apply it to the products I was buying. I figured cut out the middle man and just make my own products so I could be sure that if I’m reading about a specific formula, I can make sure I’ve got the same vehicle formula. I’ve got the right ingredient percentages, the right delivery vehicles. I started just formulating skincare for myself, took over my kitchen, which my husband was not super thrilled with and tapped on my chemistry background to build a little mobile chem lab. And so started formulating products for myself. And then at a certain point I had a couple of formulas. I was really proud of, that worked really well for me. I figured I just start a little side hustle.”
“When I got into skincare in my 20s, Reddit was the perfect way to do that. Through the subreddits skincare addiction, Asian beauty, DIY beauty, which I was actually a moderator for, for a number of years, I learned about that very scientific bent of skincare, which wasn’t really present in most of these skincare communities on the internet. I dove deep into those communities and learned as much as I possibly could. And then as I was doing my own research as a consumer, sharing that research with the community and trying to give back in a really earnest way.”
“I did not ask anyone to review. I did not give away free product for review. I was so indoctrinated in the Reddit cult at that point that I wanted to do be as upfront. Reddit is wonderful tool and it is also terrifying when they sense weakness, they will go for the jugular. And so I did not want to have any fractures in my story of if somebody finds out that this person who posted a review was actually my best friend. That can tear the legs out from a company before it gets started. I wanted to make sure that I was being as authentic as I appeared to be. I really, I didn’t do anything to chase reviews. It really was that I had shared so much about the research over the years that had led up to Stratia launching, that people knew exactly where I was coming from, exactly what went into it and then were just curious about what happened. And so they tried it out and then they liked the product.”
“There are some really powerful ways to utilize Reddit. I think primarily as market research. It is a really smart, thoughtful, eloquent audience who can give really interesting insights to what they’re looking for, what they want and don’t want out of a product, that kind of thing. I think it can also be a really good customer service and community building site to just, if people post about your products, post about problems they had with your products to go in there and really genuinely try to create a conversation in a way that is much more personal and proactive.”
“It’s tough to sell skincare online. If you’re selling clothing, you can see how pretty it looks and how great it looks on the model and the way it moves and want to buy it right then, but there’s less of a visual component to skincare. So it’s a lot harder to figure out if it’s going to work for you. I think a lot of it, it’s a several touch process of awareness and then learning a little bit about the product and why it might work. We really lean heavily on authentic UGC and customer reviews and things, so that very much a don’t take our word for it kind of thing, but it really does take a while to convert a customer to skincare.”
Bio
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Transcript:
Stephanie:
Welcome to Up Next in Commerce. This is Stephanie Postles, your host, I’m the CEO at mission.org. Today on the show we have Alli Reed, who’s the CEO of Stratia. Alli welcome to the show.
Alli:
Hi, thank you for having me.
Stephanie:
I’m super stoked. I’ve obviously been using your product and have recently become obsessed. And so when I saw you on the roster today, I was like, finally I get to figure out how she did it and how she met my exact needs of what I’ve been looking for a long time.
Alli:
Well, thank you. It was for you specifically.
Stephanie:
Just for me. Let’s just start with what is Stratia? So people even know what I’m talking about and why I’m so excited.
Alli:
Stratia is a skincare company. We focus on really scientifically backed, obsessively researched products that give your skin exactly what it needs and nothing else.
Stephanie:
Yep. Okay. Great one liner. Love that. How did you get into this? Is skincare your background, or how did you know this was the thing you wanted to do?
Alli:
I never knew this was the thing I wanted to do. I just ended up doing it. I’ve always been a science person, I will say. Over the years wanted to be a paleontologist and then astrophysicist, just changed over the years, but I didn’t get into skincare, makeup fashion, anything until I was in my 20s. And so skincare really hooked me in particular because I think of makeup is art. It washes off at the end of the day. Skincare is science in that it actually can interact with and change a living organ, with your skin. I was really drawn to that. I wanted to know everything I possibly about how the skin works on a biological level, how skincare is formulated on a chemical level, how the two interact, what can I even expect my skincare to do?
Alli:
The wonders of the internet, that you can teach yourself anything. Reading dermatology journals and skincare studies. The American Dermatology Association has a self-teaching module on their website that I highly recommend. Just tried to learn everything I possibly could about skin and skincare using the wonders of the internet.
Stephanie:
Yeah. Okay. It’s one thing to research, because I’m like, I’m a researcher, start like that. I’m like, okay, what are my three things I should do every night? Retinol, maybe a nighttime cream, that’s my level of researching where I’m just I’m a best hit type of person. When did you know this is something I want to know about personally, now I’m going to start a company, when was that point?
Alli:
It was all really gradual. At first it was just research trying to figure out my own skincare routine, to shop for skincare better. Everything that’s available on the market, you’re basically only getting what the marketing department trickles through in terms of the actual information of the ingredients that are in it, the quality of those ingredients, how it’s formulated. At a certain point I was getting all this great research and not knowing how to apply it to the products I was buying. I figured cut out the middle man and just make my own products so I could be sure that if I’m reading about a specific formula, I can make sure I’ve got the same vehicle formula. I’ve got the right ingredient percentages, the right delivery vehicles.
Alli:
I started just formulating skincare for myself, took over my kitchen, which my husband was not super thrilled with and tapped on my chemistry background to build a little mobile chem lab. And so started formulating products for myself. And then at a certain point I had a couple of formulas. I was really proud of, that worked really well for me. I figured I just start a little side hustle. A few bottles a week and she ship them on the weekends on the side of my full-time job.
Stephanie:
Okay. Side hustle. When did the vitamin C serum come into play? Because that is magical and that Liquid Gold cream you have, also magical. Where were these in the product lifestyle cycle? Because if that was a one hit wonder, I’m very jealous of you seeing that and building that right away.
Alli:
Yeah. Liquid Gold was one of my first two products that I launched with, along with Rewind. That’s the classic. That’s the OG. C+C was more recent, that came out in 2019, I want to say.
Stephanie:
Okay. It started as a side hustle, you were investing your money, getting the ingredient, testing on your skin. Was there ever a point where you were testing something you’re like, that went really wrong. That burned my skin or that’s not a good product to use, now I know better?
Alli:
More often than not. That’s what happens. C+C pulled out, that went through 60 or 70 prototypes before I got the right formula. I had 59 to 69 failures before I got there.
Stephanie:
I bet it should have been called on the back, the 70th attempt. That’s great. Okay. So side hustle, when did you start knowing this can be something that others want, my friends might want it, I can sell this thing, what did that look like?
Alli:
When I’m formulating for myself, formulating it for other people was not that big a hurdle. For launch day I made a whopping eight bottles of Liquid Gold. It wasn’t like I suddenly needed to scale up and be ordering tens of thousands of units. It really was just the equivalent of an Etsy store. And so that’s what I had conceived and I didn’t do anything other than that basically. Everything for the first three years of the company was all organic. It was just people trying it, liking it, telling their friends, posting about it. There was no attempts to gain sales on my end other than just making good products.
Stephanie:
Okay. And then what? Because I know what the story looks like. I’m looking at these revenue numbers in 2019 where you went, I’m like, okay, what happened after that?
Alli:
It just took off organically in such a crazy way where I was still at my full-time job and it got to a point within just a few months where I would go to work for eight hours, come home work on Stratia for eight hours and then sleep. And then Stratia, wake up to go to bed every day for the weekends. That’s really not an exaggeration. And so it got to a point where I knew that I would need to leave my job eventually. I kept setting myself goals of when I’m making X dollars a day with Stratia, then I can quit and then I’d get there and be well, maybe that’s not enough. Maybe it needs to be a little higher. And so I was just really scared. But it got to the point where I was like I literally can’t do another day.
Alli:
I left my job a month before 401(k) vested because I just-
Stephanie:
Oh my gosh.
Alli:
… could not make it another month. But it worked out okay in the end. And so that was about a year after I launched the company that I had to take Stratia full time.
Stephanie:
That’s awesome. What did it feel like leaving security there and also leaving behind that 401(k) investment? I’ve done the same when I left Google, there’s all these stock options. They’re like if you stay until this day, you get granted this. And if you stay extra year, you get this. And it’s so tempting to look at those and be like, I’m going to lose out on however many thousands of dollars if I leave one day earlier than this, to then just being like, I’m out, peace. What was the thought process behind that? Or how did you feel
Alli:
I was just trying to get through one more day, get through one more day. And then it got to a point where I was like, nope, that was the last day I can possibly get through. And so I think, honestly it was a lack of planning on my part. If I had metered out my energy a little better I might have made it that a month, but I just kept pushing and pushing. I’m always a person who has had at least one job usually more than one. And so it felt very strange to suddenly stare down the barrel of at least what felt at the time unemployment, obviously it wasn’t unemployment. I was still working 80 hours a week, but to now not be taking home a paycheck every other week, you know what I mean?
Stephanie:
Yeah. It’s definitely a big mindset shift going to have your own company and being like, I actually don’t know if money will come in next week. It’ll only come in if I get to work. What did that plan look like? Did you have this whole idea of, okay, here’s what I can do now that I have many hours back to just work on Stratia?
Alli:
Honestly at that point I was already working so many hours on Stratia, just keeping up with producing product, shipping it out. At that point I was still even shipping out directly to each customer who ordered.
Stephanie:
From your house?
Alli:
Yup. Made product in the kitchen, shipped out from the second bedroom. That was the plan. I’m not a marketer, I’m not a salesperson at all. And so the plan was really keeping up with the demand that was already there.
Stephanie:
Got it. I want to jump over to talking about Reddit a bit, because Reddit is always something that I’m very bullish on. I feel there’s so many business ideas in there. You can really find a lot of true fans. There was all these articles about the unbundling of Reddit and how each big group can essentially turn into 10 different businesses. And they’re pointing to 10 different businesses that basically stem from Reddit communities. I’ve always been very fascinated in this topic. I know that Reddit has a big piece to your company and spreading, and I want to hear the story behind how you tapped into Reddit’s full potential to spread the way worried about your company.
Alli:
Yeah. I love Reddit. I love talking about Reddit and at the same time I want to say that I don’t have a lot of, I can’t give a guidebook on how to utilize Reddit, because it all happened by accident.
Stephanie:
That’s the best kind of stories.
Alli:
I’ve been a Redditor for 15 years. I don’t know how long Reddit has been around.
Stephanie:
Oh wow. [crosstalk].
Alli:
It’s just always been the social media platform that I gravitate to the most. I’m not a visual person. I can’t take a good photo to save my life, but I like writing, I like learning. I like doing really obsessive, deep dives into research and that’s the right platform for that. I’ve always been active in a bunch of different subreddits. And then when I got into skincare in my 20s, Reddit was the perfect way to do that. Through the subreddits skincare addiction, Asian beauty, DIY beauty, which I was actually a moderator for, for a number of years. Learning about that very scientific bent of skincare, which wasn’t really present in most of these skincare communities on the internet.
Alli:
I dove deep into those communities and learned as much as I possibly could. And then as I was doing my own research as a consumer, sharing that research with the community and trying to give back in a really earnest way of just the long before it even conceived of Stratia, just being an active and contributing member of those Reddit communities. And got a little bit of a following for the research I was doing for the science communication that I was putting together there and on my blog. And so when I launched Stratia, it wasn’t that Reddit was in anyway a marketing plan. It was that Stratia wouldn’t have ever come into existence without what I had learned on Reddit, without the support of that community to continue to research and to bounce ideas off of each other. It really did come whole clock out of that Reddit experience.
Stephanie:
When you launched the company, did you post it on those forums to get feedback? What did it actually look like? Because to me, Reddit you have to be so authentic and not salesy. There’s a lot of ways people will be like, go away, I don’t even want to look at your post and down vote you or whatever. How did you do that in a way that actually connected with potential customers?
Alli:
I actually didn’t even post about Stratia on Reddit. I had gathered through Reddit, I had a blog that was, the name is The Acid Queen and that was my handle on Reddit as well. And so through sharing that research and referencing my blog over time, before the blog wasn’t monetized. You’re right, Reddit hates being sold to, and they can smell marketing from a mile away. And so I think the best route is to abandon any idea that you’re going to go in and be able to post a link to your blog or to your site and get a bunch of sales that way. It does need to be a really authentic engagement. I know that that’s what I have appreciated as Redditor, that’s how I engage with people. And so knowing, just treating the community the way I have appreciated being treated.
Alli:
I’d gotten that following through my blog and then I announced it on my blog. I don’t think I even mentioned it on Reddit, but because I was pulling from a Reddit community to begin with, a lot of the initial people who tried it out, posted their reviews on skincare addiction and on Asian beauty and did really super deep, in depth reviews that were incredibly helpful for spreading the word.
Stephanie:
Got it. Okay. Essentially you have your blog that you had a lot of people from Reddit who found out about your blog and subscribed there. And so then when you published on your website, hey, I have a new product. They basically went back to Reddit and talked about it organically. Was there any convincing of people to be like, hey, can you over there and mention my product or talk about it or it was just all organic? Did you interact with that content when they did it? Were you like, hi, it’s me Alli, that’s my company.
Alli:
I didn’t. I did not ask anyone to review. I did not give away free product for review. I was so indoctrinated in the Reddit cult at that point that I wanted to do be as upfront. Reddit is wonderful tool and it is also terrifying when they sense weakness, they will go for the jugular. And so I did not want to have any fractures in my story of if somebody finds out that this person who posted a review was actually my best friend. That can tear the legs out from a company before it gets started. I wanted to make sure that I was being as authentic as I appeared to be. I really, I didn’t do anything to chase reviews. It really was that I had shared so much about the research over the years that had led up to Stratia launching, that people knew exactly where I was coming from, exactly what went into it and then were just curious about what happened. And so they tried it out and then they liked the product.
Stephanie:
Yep. That’s awesome. When thinking about that now, with new people coming on to the Reddit forums, how do you engage now? Because I’m trying to think about can brands play well on Reddit? What are some of the best practices for someone who maybe hasn’t been on there for 15 years, showing research and findings, what could that look like for a company who’s like, well, I want to play in the area, I know there’s customers there, but I also don’t want to sell, I don’t want them going for my jugular per se. What could a brand be doing?
Alli:
I think I have not begun to figure out how to use Reddit as a sales channel. I don’t know that an easy way really exists. But there are some really powerful ways to utilize Reddit. I think primarily as market research. It is a really smart, thoughtful, eloquent audience who can give really interesting insights to what they’re looking for, what they want and don’t want out of a product, that kind of thing. I think it can also be a really good customer service and community building site to just, if people post about your products, post about problems they had with your products to go in there and really genuinely try to create a conversation in a way that is much more personal and proactive. I think it can be, obviously those are longer term plays that aren’t going to necessarily generate ROI.
Alli:
But I think the downside that people hate being sold to, can also be an upside of people are there really authentically. And so you can really tap into all of these really interesting insights so that your customer base and your potential customer base have.
Stephanie:
Yeah. Whenever I look at Reddit, I think it can either, you can find a really good diamond that can accelerate your business, your thoughts, or you can find a really bad idea that takes you the complete wrong way. And it’s from someone pretending to know something and you’re like, I’m going to go invest in whatever. And it’s like, no, you probably shouldn’t have listened to that person. Because they seem so confident on both sides, the person who is completely wrong and the person who’s really smart, the one who’s usually the most wrong seems the most confident.
Alli:
The more over the past decade that I have learned about skin and skin care and formulation, the more I’ve gone into skincare addiction and seen posts and been like, oh no, that’s not it at all.
Stephanie:
Yeah. Well, that’s what I want to ask. What are maybe some different recommendations? They can either be funny ones where you’re like that’s just not a good idea or good ones that you actually implemented from using Reddit as an R&D area.
Alli:
I think the good parts of the way Reddit approaches skincare is that in a lot of ways it can really be brand and product agnostic. It really is about finding out what works for your skin, finding out the commonalities between skin and figuring out the unique differences. So still much of what I have learned about skincare, about active ingredients, about putting together a routine, I’ve learned from Reddit. But I think they take that way too far, a lot of the time. It’ll be like you need to apply your age A, and then wait 10.2 minutes or else it will go out of the pH range at which it’s pKa value. It’s like, no, it’s not actually that serious. I think-
Stephanie:
[inaudible] if it is. I’ll just be [inaudible]. I guess I’ll be okay with that.Alli:
Yeah, exactly.
Stephanie:
Is there a universal skincare routine where you’re like, if most people just did this, this is pretty good for people who don’t want to do too much, if they were like, I don’t want to learn my skin, I don’t want to learn, any personalization, if I just want something basic, what would you tell them to do?
Alli:
I think the most basic skincare routine has three products. It has cleanser, moisturizer and sunscreen. Sunscreen you just need, because that’s the only skincare product that if you don’t use it could kill you. It’s really the only necessity that you need. Cleanser, essentially to wash off the sunscreen at the end of the day. And then moisturizer to replace the moisture that your skin loses from cleansing. It really is you need a sunscreen, therefore you need a cleanser, therefore you need a moisturizer.
Stephanie:
Got it. Okay. And then you’re the expert, I want to hear, what do you do? Your skin looks great. Tell me the secrets.
Alli:
Thank you. I use, believe it or not a lot of Stratia products.
Stephanie:
What? I never would’ve guessed.
Alli:
I think a lot of it is also about finding what works for your unique skin, because there’s such a huge variety. I have extremely dry skin, which means I don’t use a cleanser in the morning. I just rinse my face with water because all that’s happened between my skin routine the previous night and that morning, is that my pillow case has touched my face. I don’t really need to cleanse, just rinse with water until last night’s products have washed off. Then I use our vitamin C serum.
Stephanie:
So good people. I’m not lying. It’s so good and soft and creamy. Sorry, carry on.
Alli:
That was definitely the hardest product to formulate so far. I’m glad it worked out.
Stephanie:
Well I’m glad you took it past the finish line, because every time I put it on, I’m like, this is magical.
Alli:
Then I use Rewind, which is our vitamin serum, Fortify, our facial oil. And then I actually use a non Stratia moisturizer for now, Belif moisturizing bomb, because Liquid Gold is, I formulated it so that all skin types could use it. I made it lighter, a lighter texture so that people with very oily skin can use it, which means it’s not quite enough as a stand alone moisturizer for me. I use that. And then I use the EltaMD SPF 46 sunscreen, which if you are trying to find a sunscreen that doesn’t feel really greasy, doesn’t smell like a beach, whatever, I think that’s just a great one to start with. It works so well for so many people. It’s great for sensitive skin too. I recommend it.
Alli:
Then in the evening, I cleanse with the cleansing milk and then I do Rewind and Fortify again, my favorite duo. I use Curology for their tripnolan formula, which is a prescription grade retinoid. And then my favorite night mask, sleeping mask is Liquid Gold mixed with Aquaphor which sounds disgusting, but it is delightful.
Stephanie:
Sounds good to me. Wow. Okay. How long are you keeping that on for?
Alli:
I just put that on before I go to bed and then rinse it off in the morning.
Stephanie:
Okay. Got it. Got it. I like that. Okay. I feel now it’s going to turn into a whole skincare episode and I’m here for it. What do you think about humidifiers? Because we just had on a company called Canopy and they’re basically, they have these new humidifiers, but they’re all around beauty. I guess it’s also good for health and all that, but it’s around skincare and if you have a certain level of moisture in the air at home your face is going to look better and it’ll have water at the bottom. What do you think about companies like that and having humidifiers around?
Alli:
I think it’s one of those things where I think some people won’t see any real benefit from it because they’re skin doesn’t need that. And some people see massive benefit from it because their skin does. But I think we all know from experience your skin dries out in the winter because colder air can hold less moisture, so there’s less moisture around. If you do tend to get dry, flaky, uncomfortable skin, then I think a humidifier can be a great option.
Stephanie:
Cool. Thank you for answering all my beauty questions. I can get back into commerce now, I guess. When did you move to a point where you were doing paid advertising and really trying to find new customers who were not maybe the most avid beauty people, but just every person who’s like, yeah, I need a good moisturizer. I want a good routine. How did you start attracting them?
Alli:
That was in 2019. 2019, I think of as my laying foundations here. I scaled up on manufacturing quite a lot so that I could actually keep up with demand and get to a point where, the previous three years I’d just been desperately trying to keep up with this runaway train. And so at that point I finally got my feet under me. We had the capacity to start pursuing some growth and I have already said in this podcast how bad I am at sales and marketing. One of my first hires, she’s the fourth person on the team, is our director of marketing and strategy. She’s been with me for two and a half years, almost three, but she built the marketing department from the ground up. So she figured out, and it’s been just a lot of testing things in small ways and seeing what works and what doesn’t, because we were bootstrapped. And so we weren’t didn’t have anyone else’s money to play with. So we had to do things in pretty small ways, see what the ROI was on it and then readjust really quickly.
Stephanie:
What were some of the things that she wanted to implement within the first couple months of being there, when she came in and she’s like, we need to have these three things, was there anything that was top priority for you all to implement?
Alli:
Yeah. The first thing she did was really build a brand work and again lay foundations for the growth of the marketing department. But email, I collected emails for an email list that once a year I would send a plain text email saying, our black Friday sale is happening, go buy stuff. That was the extent that I was utilizing our email list. She set that in motion. She got our paid social advertising off the ground, set up Google stuff. She’s done one billion things, but I think there was some fruit that was so absurdly low hanging that it was like, why weren’t you already doing this? That was the easy stuff off the ground.
Stephanie:
How quickly did you see results from her starting to implement these things? Was it right away or what did that look like?
Alli:
No, it does have a little bit of a ramp up. I think because it’s tough to sell skincare online. If you’re selling clothing, you can see how pretty it looks and how great it looks on the model and the way it moves and want to buy it right then, but there’s less of a visual component to skincare. So it’s a lot harder to figure out if it’s going to work for you. I think a lot of it, it’s a several touch process of awareness and then learning a little bit about the product and why it might work. We really lean heavily on authentic UGC and customer reviews and things, so that very much a don’t take our word for it kind of thing, but it really does take a while to convert a customer to skincare. It helps that we have such affordable price points, so it’s much less of a risk, but it is still, it takes a little bit.
Stephanie:
I’m imagining just even trying to compete in the beauty industry and skincare industry. I know you mentioned before that your position to try and counter fads and to me you look around every day and there’s something new that you should be doing, something new you should put on your skin, a new way to think about the products, things that shouldn’t be in it, that should be in it. There’s a lot of probably misconceptions that are not completely accurate. How do you go about tackling that while also still staying focused on creating great products?
Alli:
I think that the reason I do both is that they’re both combined. I think that the way that Stratia differentiates itself is its focus on science, on research. I have tried to use my lack of skill at marketing as a real strength, that I am not trying to sell you something I’m trying to share the research, I’ve done the knowledge I have. I think it’s impossible to talk about all this without talking about clean beauty, which I always use with verbal air quotes because there’s no definition of what clean beauty is. If you define clean beauty as using ingredients that are not harmful to you, then absolutely we’re clean, but we use parabens, because parabens are the best researched, least harmful preservative out there.
Alli:
It is just a very bad rap that they have. And because I think one thing that I think has become a big part of clean beauty is describing what you’re not. We are X free. We don’t use, we’ve got this long list of thousands of ingredients that we don’t use, and that has become the marketing pitch. And so any new ingredient you can add, you can be the first to add to your we don’t use this list, becomes its own marketing play, which is not helpful. It ends up so that you can’t really make good effective products, you can just make products that don’t have a bunch of stuff in it.
Alli:
I think being really transparent about what we use, why we use it and countering the trend of using parabens, using silicons, using all sorts of things that are, if we can show that they are actually third party research, really reliable research has shown that they’re completely safe when used on the skin. And we can also share that education. We can help to create better informed skin care consumers overall. I think that helps differentiate us from the thousands of, quote unquote, clean beauty brands out there.
Stephanie:
What are some other buzzword in clean beauty that you’re like, you should ignore that? Because I’ve seen that whole list of notes and I’m like, one of these days it’s going to be no water and people will be like, yes, finally, no water in my products anymore.
Alli:
Exactly.
Stephanie:
What are some other buzz words?
Alli:
Dihydrogen monoxide is a silent killer I’m telling you. I think honestly anything free. There are certain no animal cruelty or vegan or things that are a moral or ethical stance, absolutely more power to you. But if it’s ingredient free and it’s not a moral or ethical stance, some people don’t want to use petroleum based products because of the supply chain involved in that for environmental concerns. Again, totally fine. But if it really is about how it impacts your own skin and health, there is nothing that is being put in skincare products these days that is going to hurt you really. There are things like fragrance is a common allergen, but if you’re not allergic to fragrance, there’s nothing wrong with using it. At Stratia we don’t use fragrance just because we want to be able to be used by as many people as possible. Since it is such a common allergen, we avoid it, but most people can use fragrance just fine.
Alli:
I think the thing it gets misconstrued the most often about ingredients, negative ingredients in steam care, is that we need to differentiate between how that ingredient is getting onto or into your body and those studies. Pretty much every study that shows that an ingredient has a negative effect, it’s either being ingested or injected into usually a mass or a rat. When you eat something or inject it into your bloodstream, the point is to integrate that into your biological processes. That’s the whole point of eating something or injecting it. When you put it on your skin, your skin’s whole point is to keep the outsides out and the insides in. If you put something on your skin there aren’t even any blood vessels that go to the epidermis.
Alli:
Imagine how much easier it would be to give your kid cough syrup if you could just rub the cough syrup on their throat, that’s not how it works. It doesn’t get into your body that way.
Stephanie:
That’s what skin care I feel says, is your skin is the biggest organ or something. And whatever you put on your skin is going to be inside of you. I’ve never heard your take on this, which I appreciate, because I have kids. Yeah. That’s so true.
Alli:
Nice.
Stephanie:
If they could just suck it right in, everyone would be doing that.
Alli:
Yeah, absolutely. I think there are a lot of points like that that make it easier to sell skin care if I tap into that, really understandable fear that people have about harming their own health or the health of their loved ones and I can tap into that and say, everything you put on your body ends up in your bloodstream, so use our product, because it’s all edible or whatever. That helps me sell my product, but it is also, it’s false. It’s insincere and it’s selling fear, which I don’t think the world needs more of.
Stephanie:
No, no. So then when it comes to educating consumers, how do you think about doing that in a way that they’ll connect with, that isn’t maybe so in the weeds, because to me stuff like that has just been one liners that I think beauty companies have had where it’s like, oh yeah, and then people are just spouting it off. It’s been such easy things to remember. How do you go about actually educating a customer of, that’s wrong and here’s why, but not getting too deep?
Alli:
That’s the struggle. It’s been not getting too deep part that I really struggle with.
Stephanie:
You’ve been on Reddit for 15 years, you got a lot of things to pull up into your arsenal.
Alli:
Right. My blog was often 5,000 words scribbs about pH and skincare. Keeping it concise is a struggle of mine. I’ve always had a dream of, did you ever watch Good Eats with Alton brown back in the day?
Stephanie:
Yeah. Yeah. Yup.
Alli:
I want to do that, but with skincare. I think he has a way of making the science of cooking so accessible and so fun, but still really scientifically sound and authentic. I would love to do that. I would love to make the science of skincare really relatable and accessible.
Stephanie:
That’d be cool. It’s like what Gwyneth Paltrow is doing too with her Goop series. She’s taking a different topic each episode and doing just that too, like here’s the misconceptions around it. Here’s what it actually is. That’d be cool. And branded contents where it’s at these days. I feel you should jump into that. When building up Stratia, getting it off the ground, what were some of the biggest challenges you faced or maybe the biggest surprises when your company was taking off and making lots of money and you’re like, I didn’t expect this?
Alli:
My entrepreneurial journey has just been every day blindly walk face first into a wall and then okay, cool. I know that the wall’s here now.
Stephanie:
[inaudible].Alli:
It’s just been that over and over. I think, especially given that we manufacture in-house and have all of our operations under one roof. I have no manufacturing experience outside of Stratia. So figuring that all out from scratch was an enormous challenge. And then figuring out marketing in general, because it’s not something I have any background in. It’s not something that was part of Stratia’s history for over half of our life. And so figuring out, going from the product sales itself to, okay, but how do we reach the people who aren’t reading my blog? That has been an enormous challenge and a really fun and rewarding one, but a huge challenge nonetheless.
Stephanie:
Cool. When thinking ahead, what are some new products that you all are experimenting with or hoping to launch?
Alli:
I learned the hard way that I do not share products which we’re ready to launch because I started talking about years ago, I’m working on a vitamin C serum and then it took me a year and a half and people got very mad at me, because they really wanted this vitamin C serum. I’m working on a lot of fun products right now.
Stephanie:
I see. Well, we can change the question then, so you do not get a bunch of hate mail, which I totally get that. I’d do that too if you told me you’re working on that and I knew the potential and you didn’t release it. Then what are you most excited about over the next couple years, just around your company in general?
Alli:
I am so happy that we are scaling now to the point where I can focus less on the day-to-day putting out of fires and demand planning and the roof is leaking and more focus on the things that I love and that I think are my unique strengths that I can offer to the company, which are research and development, developing new products, being at the lab bench is my favorite place in the world. And customer education, talking about skincare, creating. I would love to create, that Stratia can be an education hub even for people who aren’t buying Stratia products. That’s my dream.
Stephanie:
Isn’t that so nice when you can move into that role which I think most people get burned out and that first couple years where it’s like, okay, I don’t want to be, when you have your own company, you’re like, well, I don’t want to be doing all these things. I’m not enjoying this. It’s like once you get past that tipping point where it’s like, oh wait, now I can hire. I have people who are better than me in a lot of these areas. Now I don’t have to do all those things. I can go back to my roots. Isn’t that such a nice place to be in?
Alli:
Oh my God. It’s so great.
Stephanie:
I love that. Well, Alli, thank you so much for coming on the show, sharing your knowledge. It’s been really fun hearing all about Stratia. I’m telling you guys, if you haven’t tried it yet, go out there and do it, because my life has been changed since then. Where can people learn more about you and Stratia?
Alli:
We are a direct consumer, so you can find us on our website, stratiaskin.com. Stratiaskin, which is also our handle across all social media.
Stephanie:
Amazing. Thanks so much.
Alli:
Thanks.
