#awinewith Ali Clarke
MEET Ali Clarke, Founder of Bondi Blades
You can find them here:
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:05):
Allie, welcome to Spark tv.
Ali Clarke (00:07):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here with you and my wine to have a chat about all things business.
Danielle Lewis (00:13):
Yes, so good. And I'm excited you brought wine because not everybody does anymore. I've got an equal opportunity for everybody, so I'm always so excited when people bring a glass of wine. It's a good excuse for me to have one. Well, it's that
Ali Clarke (00:28):
Time of the day for me anyway, so the Malbec comes out and I sit at the desk and off we go.
Danielle Lewis (00:34):
I love it. I love it. No, and it's funny because when I ran off to get one, I just picked one out of the little wine rack that we have and I was like, I hope this isn't too fancy. I was like, I'm just going to take it and no, we'll deal about later. I have no idea. Amazing. Let's tell everybody who you are and what you do.
Ali Clarke (00:54):
So my name is Ellie Clark. I'm the founder of a brand called Bondi Blades. We started back in Covid. We were Australia's first at home sustainable derma razor, and I'm also co-founder of another company called Bondi Beauty Distribution, which has come about from the Bondi blades.
Danielle Lewis (01:11):
So cool. Okay. Talk to me, what does it actually do? So for anyone who's unfamiliar with it, what does the product actually do?
Ali Clarke (01:19):
So a dermaplaning tool is a little facial razor for women. Men can use it too as well, tidy up their eyebrows or their beard line, and it's basically shaving your face. It gently removes the peach F dead skin from your face, which means that your products will then penetrate the skin better and your makeup will sit a lot more flawlessly. If you don't remove the peach fuzz from your face, you get that cakey look, we've got the fine little hairs, the makeup sits on top of the hairs and it just doesn't give you that polished gloss finish look. And despite what people say, it does not grow back thicker or darker, removing your facial hair. It's very different on your face. The hair that we're removing is called vaus hair. It's a very fine hair, and the worst thing that can happen is it will just grow back the same as it was.
Danielle Lewis (02:09):
So you mentioned that this grew or came about as of during Covid. Was that a result of not being able to go out to say a salon and get this done? Is that where the kind of idea sparked from?
Ali Clarke (02:21):
Yeah, it actually was. I was about to have my daughter and I was already going to a salon having dermaplaning every fortnight, and I was like, oh, this is an amazing experience, but it's 15 minutes. It's costing me $150, and while my skin feels great, the lady's just shaving my face and putting some nice music on while I relax for 15 minutes. I'm about to have a child, I'm not going to have time or the extra $150 a fortnight to spare to go and get this done. I need to find something to do this at home. And there just wasn't anything I could find at that point in time in the, and then lockdown happened, so it was right product, right time because obviously the idea dropped and that's how it came about. Really.
Danielle Lewis (03:07):
Wow, that's so cool. I love it. So many businesses are a result of, oh my God, I have this problem. Why hasn't anybody solved this? And somebody that's excited and motivated enough to actually see it through. So obviously having the idea, having the problem, experiencing the pain was one thing, and it being the right time is the next, but then how did you actually go? Because I can also imagine that through covid getting a product developed would've been really challenging. So what did that process look like for you?
Ali Clarke (03:38):
To be honest, it was actually quite easy. Tell me, I saw samples from a few different manufacturers and got them shipped over and tried and tested them all. Initially I went with a three pack that was a plastic option because it were cute colors. They looked good, good price. And the MOQ wasn't as high, but I still had the idea that I wanted to then step up to the sustainable product. So I did have samples of this as well. It's just the MOQ is a lot higher. So I thought, let me test the waters first before I go all out and order 10,000 packets of a product in case it doesn't sell fair. That's a great, great strategy. I got the samples and I started using them, giving them to my friends and family to try, and I just started to, it was also when TikTok started to appear.
Danielle Lewis (04:27):
Yep.
Ali Clarke (04:27):
I started documenting myself testing these products and talking about what I was doing, and it just kind of all took off from there.
Danielle Lewis (04:35):
Oh my gosh, that's so cool. I can imagine too, there is a bit of an education process of showing people how to use it, letting them know it's okay, introducing people who maybe haven't even heard of it before.
Ali Clarke (04:48):
Yeah, absolutely. I had to spend a lot of time educating customers on how to shave their face at home. So I make lots of tutorials. I spend a lot of time on TikTok live, shaving my face. Oh really? People? Yes. That's awesome. I love it. Just to show them that it's not a scary thing. Yes, you're taking a razor to your face, but if you do it correctly, you're not going to cut your skin or anything like that. And it's a really easy process to do at home.
Danielle Lewis (05:17):
Oh, that's so cool. So do you think TikTok has been one of your biggest sales and marketing channels?
Ali Clarke (05:24):
It was for sure, and tiktoks a really interesting platform because my personal TikTok as a founder has done so much better at promoting the business than the actual brand TikTok itself.
Danielle Lewis (05:38):
That is interesting
Ali Clarke (05:39):
Because I found people were buying into my story and following along that journey that I was sharing my ups and downs, the good things, the challenges I had in business, I was very much an open book and doing that, it sort of helped grow the business that way
Danielle Lewis (05:57):
That way. And I mean that's a really interesting thing about, I think the time we live in now. I almost think you have to be a bit of a personal brand to grow any brand. Would you agree with that?
Ali Clarke (06:12):
Look at the Kardashians as an example. Kim Kardashian has what, 200 million followers as an individual, but her brands don't have anywhere near that because people might buy the product for the brand, but they follow her story and her journey. And you see that with a lot of female founder brands. People are investing in the brand because they follow that founder's personal journey as opposed to the business itself. And they're more invested because that female founder has come out and started sharing all their behind the scenes experiences.
Danielle Lewis (06:44):
Yeah, I, I mean I know there's a lot of people who don't want to be in the spotlight and really struggle to show up, but I think that the people that do just take off so much quicker.
Ali Clarke (06:57):
Yeah, absolutely. I would totally agree. I've seen brands and even in my consulting that my husband and I do, we've found the founders that don't want to be the face of brand as much as we educate and coach them to do that are never as successful as the ones that become face of brand and share their behind the scenes stuff because there's, people want a personal connection to a brand these days. They're moving away from big faceless companies to wanting to support small businesses, entrepreneurs, startups, and if you're a startup but you're not prepared to share that behind the scenes type stuff, it's 10 times harder to grow that brand. You could have the most amazing product, but if you're not prepared to put in the hard yards at the start and get out there and be the face of it and talk about it and share it, it's very challenging.
Danielle Lewis (07:41):
Yeah, it really is. And I think you're spot on with saying that people buy from people. People want to know that behind the scenes story. Yeah, I think we are becoming more conscious as a consumer. We don't want to just go to Woolies and Chuck anything in our trolley and not think about it anymore. We do actually want to support people who are giving it a go.
Ali Clarke (08:05):
Yeah, absolutely. I would so agree with that.
Danielle Lewis (08:08):
So you mentioned your consulting business. What's that? What's that all about?
Ali Clarke (08:15):
So we've been doing consulting for about 18 months and how we came to founder that business was my husband seen. I was spending a lot of time helping other people. People were always messaging my TikTok, wanting how do you get into retail? That sort of stuff. And he said, we need to monopolize this. Let's start a business that focuses on distribution and consulting and the two components of that business. We have a founder will come to us that has an idea but doesn't even know whether to start, whether it's from sourcing the manufacturer at a packaging design and things like that to brands that are in the e-commerce space, but want to get to that next level of retail. And what my husband does is he's fantastic negotiation and sales, whereas I'm the artistic creative one. So I help with the brands, with their getting marketing, pr, packaging, that sort of stuff.
(09:05):
And then he has this network of over 400 people that we've gifted with through Bondi Blades that he can then introduce them for distribution opportunities, whether it's a retailer, distributor, wholesaler, things like that. And he knows how to negotiate those contracts and have those, I call them crucial conversations. And that's his field of expertise. So yeah, we work with brands to get 'em into retail and we actually had a really recent exciting story. We're only working with a brand three months and just last week they've shipped off their first lot of stock to the US A and it was like 30,000 USD and it's
(09:45):
In Australia. It's a pretty much unknown brand, but one of our connections in America seen the value in the brand and what we're doing with it and yeah, that's really exciting. So without our help, they would never have got that order. They wouldn't have had the connections or know what was needed to facilitate that and what sort of marketing would need to be in place, finessing the packaging, the social media, all that sort of stuff that buyers and retailers are looking for. And with the consulting, what took us three to four years to build, we can get say an existing brand within three months, we can get them in an online eTail, three to six months, physical stores, 12 months international. It's a lot quicker process because we know what they're looking for, we know what they want and we've got those connections and where we've built those relationships, those buyers trust us and distributors and they know that we're not going to present them a brand if ourselves don't believe in it because they're so busy. They get so many presentations every day. It's very consuming that we're only going to present them something that we know will sell.
Danielle Lewis (10:53):
Oh my God, this is awesome. And it's so interesting. It's almost another great thing about starting a business right now. There are so many people like you and your, was it husband? Yes. Hasn't like supporting other people. There's never been a better time to launch a business or scale a business because there are so many people who are actually willing to help.
Ali Clarke (11:16):
Yeah, exactly. And we only really advertise through, I guess word of mouth. We get referrals from other business owners or we do have a bit of social media and do some ads, but we've been very fortunate that we get lots of referrals because people have been happy with the service we've given them
Danielle Lewis (11:31):
And
Ali Clarke (11:31):
Then they refer other people to us.
Danielle Lewis (11:34):
Yeah, that is so cool. I mean, so on that topic of business growth, and you mentioned TikTok as one of the primary channels. What else did you do to grow Bondi Blades to where it is today?
Ali Clarke (11:48):
So in Covid, I spent a fortune on influencer marketing. I think it was 50 or $60,000 in the first year.
Danielle Lewis (11:55):
Wow. Oh my god.
Ali Clarke (11:57):
Influencer marketing at that time was huge, but your return on investment was massive. There was a few that you had to pay that didn't get the results you would've expected, but 99% of the time, I would say the influencers I invested in, because I chose them very well,
(12:12):
Within about five minutes of going live, I would've got the feedback I'd paid for them. The sales were just profit. It was such a critical marketing tool to use the influencer marketing. But I think now the landscape has changed a lot and what did work back then is not working as well now. So you've got to pivot and you've got to look at different things like more your UGCs and your customer reviews, your ads and also pr. PR is massive, especially if you want to take your brand into retail. If I google your brand and there's no presence, if I hit Bondi blades and there's no in hit news and there's no PR in a sea of products, a buyer's going to think, well, what is this brand they haven't invested in? PR and marketing people need to know about the brand. And PR builds that credibility helps with build your SEO as well. And it just makes such a big presence when you go to present a brand that sort of strategic PR and marketing behind it.
Danielle Lewis (13:17):
Yeah. So big retailers want that. They almost want to know that you are already doing the work to sell the product before it hits their shelves. Hey?
Ali Clarke (13:27):
Yeah, absolutely. Because for example, in grocery, if you come in as a new brand, you've only got 13 weeks to prove yourself. So people after 12 months of negotiations and getting your stock ready to get it into the distribution center, Woolworths for example, get into the Woolies once it's on shelf, there's a 13 week period of review. If you're not hitting the sales numbers, your item is deleted and in clearance straight away. So getting there is only half the battle, then you've got to keep it. So the retailer is going to ask you, what are you going to do to support your brand? Sell through? Obviously you're selling it to them quite a discount. So there is some marketing expectation that they're going to contribute, but also as a brand, you need to contribute marketing expenses, whether it's the pr, co-op, lots of things like that to incentivize the retailer, to push your brand, put it on the shelf and think it's going to sell you. And someone who is exceptional at this retail is actually a founder I really admire. Her name is Iris, she started the quick Flick.
Danielle Lewis (14:33):
Oh yes, I follow her on Instagram. It's so awesome.
Ali Clarke (14:37):
Her and her team are in Kohl's constantly filming content and driving customers to that store. And that's what the retailers love to see.
Danielle Lewis (14:46):
Yeah, that's so interesting, isn't it? And again, it's like such founder-led marketing, isn't it?
Ali Clarke (14:52):
Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. Totally different landscape to what it used to be.
Danielle Lewis (14:56):
Do you find that with PR as well? So you mentioned that that was a really key driver. Do you think that a lot of that PR is around the founder as well or is it a bit of mix of the product?
Ali Clarke (15:07):
Yeah, I found the best results from PR I got was Tess got me into a couple of daily mail articles as an example.
Danielle Lewis (15:17):
Nice.
Ali Clarke (15:18):
The first one that happened, I didn't even realize it had gone live until I was out for dinner with some girlfriends, and this was on a Saturday night about 7 38. It was only after the first 12 months of my business running. And we were sitting at the dinner table and all of a sudden the Shopify Ching started to go crazy on my phone. Everyone's looking at me and I'm like, what's going on? And then I checked my phone and the Daily Mail article had gone live about my story about being a working mom, starting this business, and it just drove thousands of people to my store that wanted to support it. And there was all these lovely comments in the checkout saying, oh, I love your brand. I've followed you on TikTok. I love to support you. I'm so happy you've got this article. People seen it and wanted to support Just that sharing that story was just profound for the business. And then off that, we kept getting more inquiries for interviews and stories because people and as well, they love to hear that story where you've started a business with no business experience, you're a working mom, all those things that people really resonate with. And it was really inspiring for a lot of people as well too.
Danielle Lewis (16:34):
I think it's awesome because I think that if sometimes we think as a person wanting to start a business, we think that they're all drawbacks. Like, oh my God, I dunno what I'm doing. I'm not qualified, I don't have this, I don't have this. But people that are in that position and have a go anyway, people want to support them.
Ali Clarke (16:54):
Yeah, absolutely. I had no idea how to even start a Shopify, so I watched a tutorial and how to open a Shopify store,
(17:01):
How to print labels. I had to get my friend Mia to help me set up my post business. I had no idea how to print labels out. I was handwriting labels in the beginning. I didn't know that you could get this app that integrated to your store that you could generate the labels and print them and then you'd be printing streams of them and just things like that. You just learn on the go and talking to other people in the same or similar industry and just networking with people. You can bounce ideas off them and share tips and tricks. And it's almost like in Covid as well, there was this small business community on TikTok and everyone would be sharing their tips and tricks and supporting each other. And it was a really good time to start a business and just learn a lot from other people.
Danielle Lewis (17:48):
And I think an interesting comment around, you said it before around what works in some periods doesn't always work, so you have to adapt and change. And I think you are right. During Covid there was this perfect storm of things and we saw a lot of, some businesses not do so well, but a lot of new brands emerged that really connected with people, really founder led marketing, consumer led marketing influencers. But the landscape's kind of changed now, but I love what you said, you've just got to adapt and figure out what works now because I think that will always happen. We will always go through these seasons where who knows what's going to happen in 2025, what's the world doing? What's the economy doing? What's the state of whatever? There might even be a new social media platform that comes out. We seem to have a new social platform every few years, so it's like you never know. I think you have to as a business owner, just keep adapting and changing and having that continuous learning and optimizing mindset.
Ali Clarke (18:52):
Absolutely. I would totally agree. And you've always got to be open to change and new ideas and open to suggestions and taking on feedback, good and bad, and just planning for that next stage because who knows what's going to happen, like you
Danielle Lewis (19:08):
Said. Yeah. What has been the biggest challenge you've experienced so far in business?
Ali Clarke (19:16):
For me, the biggest challenge definitely would be, especially in the early stages when we first started dealing with distributors, was having those conversations interesting that it's pretty much male dominated field at the sales type level,
Danielle Lewis (19:30):
And
Ali Clarke (19:31):
I just didn't know how to have those conversations. I would be very, I don't like confrontation and
(19:39):
Being so personally invested, I couldn't take the emotion out of it and separate my personal feelings from business. I'd make decisions based on my emotions, which was not good for the business at times. And that's when my husband stepped in and said, let me come in and help you. And it was the best thing to be honest because then I could just let him take over those things that I wasn't confident at doing and comfortable, and he got steered back in the right direction. He could have those conversations and I could then just focus on what I'm really good at, which is the creativity side and the marketing and branding and leave all the hard stuff.
Danielle Lewis (20:19):
I love it. It sounds like such a great partnership. I know sometimes going into business with a family member or a husband or a partner or whatever can be challenging because it's new levels of conversation that people might not have had before. But I think when it works and you have complimentary skills, it can just be so powerful because you've suddenly put two people who are just so invested in this working together.
Ali Clarke (20:47):
Yeah, absolutely. And he's CEO role, I guess you would say, and I'm the marketing person and it just works well. But at times, especially when we were negotiating, when we started to expand really quickly, it does sometimes feel like you're living, breathing the business 24 and there's no escape from it. You live together, you're working together, and you're raising a child as well. And it is really challenging, but it can also be very rewarding as well.
Danielle Lewis (21:18):
Yeah, absolutely. Look, I love it. I love to hear it because I feel like at the moment there's a little bit of a trend going on Instagram at the moment around bagging guys out a little bit in male dominated fields. And I'm like, what that? And I'm like, what is that about? I know. And it really bothers me. Like I wouldn't be where I am in business without my husband's support. I've had great support from it, don't get me wrong. I've experienced all the crap over the years. We raised capital for scrunch and all that, and I got all the stupid comments, but I'm like, but on the whole guys are fucking great. And they're so supportive of our dreams.
Ali Clarke (21:58):
Of course they are.
Danielle Lewis (21:59):
It made me laugh actually. We were in Perth a couple of weekends ago and they were setting up this market stall down on the water, and I walked past and this girl was setting up her stand and it was candles or something, and there was a guy, there was obviously a partner. I was there unpacking boxes and I was like, that's what I like to see. She's got a crazy dream. And he's like, yes, I'll go to the markets with you. And oh, that's the best. Cool. That's so good. Yeah, I love it so much. Yeah, it's really interesting. I think that everyone that goes into business has different levels of challenges and it's sort of, it's challenging running a business, but I think it can also help us grow and push us in ways that we might never have thought we would grow ever.
Ali Clarke (22:45):
Yeah, absolutely. And learning how to communicate better and all those sort of things that go along with it. And
Danielle Lewis (22:53):
So cool that you both figured that out and then actually launched a complimentary business helping other people do that. I think it's so wild at the beginning, I'm sure you never thought that that was going to be a possibility.
Ali Clarke (23:08):
Not at all. It wasn't even on the radar. He comes up with all these ideas there and now he's on, he's in the property game now into, it's funny, he's more the entrepreneur than I am. Came up with the shaving the face pretty much. Yeah. So yeah, he's the ideas man. I'm just the girl.
Danielle Lewis (23:30):
I love it. I'm sure you're far more than that, but I love the modesty. And so I wanted to ask as well around where you can actually buy at the moment. So do you do a combination of online sales in the big retailers like wholesale? What's that kind of makeup look like?
Ali Clarke (23:48):
Yeah, so Bondo Blade, you could pretty much buy in most pharmacies around Australia now. And if they haven't got it, they can order it from the wholesaler and have it there in the afternoon. If you order it in the morning, it's there in the afternoon in the biggest wholesaler in Australia called Symbion that has, it's got, it's about 3000 pharmacies attached to it. Oh my
Danielle Lewis (24:06):
God, that's
Ali Clarke (24:07):
Awesome. Yeah, their warehouse, but predominantly your Blooms, your Chem pros, your AMLs, Terry Whites, those sort of places
(24:15):
We're in FoodWorks, lots of online retailers as well. So it's very accessible across Australia. And we have our own online store as well, but we've sort of moved to more a wholesale business predominantly, especially with the international stuff. So online is not an area that we have focused on the last 12 months while we try to expand overseas. But next year we'll go back to, I guess focusing a bit of our time and marketing efforts on direct to customers from our online channel, because that's where you get the most margin in your product because when you're focusing on wholesale, while you're doing bigger volumes and numbers, the margin is less. So if we can go back to, I guess, spending a bit of time focusing on that direct to customer, that's just another revenue channel as well to focus back on.
Danielle Lewis (25:03):
And that's really interesting as well. I think that's one thing that people can underestimate when they're in that initial scoping phase of figuring out how things, and I mean, you were obviously really smart at the beginning, going, what's the best profit margin, smaller MOQs? Because if you're going to go down that wholesale path, you've really got to think about the fact that, oh my God, I'm only selling this for half the amount or somewhat than I thought of.
Ali Clarke (25:30):
Yeah, absolutely. And when you're going in from direct to customer to retail, it's a massive shift and change and having to, you might have to wait 60, 90 days to get paid as well. There's a whole nother level of things when you go from just online e-commerce to being in a retail store, and then the retailers want marketing and ad spend as well. So there's just so many more things that you have to think about.
Danielle Lewis (25:57):
Yeah, it's amazing. Well, we could talk all day, but I always love to wrap up these podcasts with one last piece of advice. So reflecting on your time in business, what would be one piece of advice that you would give to another woman on her journey?
Ali Clarke (26:14):
Think of my best piece of advice is definitely, it's never a failure, it's always a lesson. I'm not sure who said that, but it's a quote that I really live by because so many times you think, oh, this is not happening, but you're learning something from it. So you haven't failed at something because it hasn't worked out. It means that you've learned something that you can put into another business, or it's always a learning experience.
Danielle Lewis (26:41):
Yeah, absolutely love that. And I think you've got to experiment and try new things, and the world will always change. So if you have that mindset that it's not a failure, it's a learning that will hold you in really good stead for growing your business.
Ali Clarke (26:56):
Absolutely.
Danielle Lewis (26:58):
I love it. Allie, you are the best. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with the Spark community and share your insights. It's been a pleasure to have you.
Ali Clarke (27:07):
Well, thank you so much for having me, Danielle. It was lovely to meet you and cheers. Cheers.
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