Create a Beauty Brand Online in Minutes with These Simple Steps — Adam Chuntz | Business Ideas 2024, Starting A Cosmetic Brand, Side Hustle Ideas 2024, Business Ideas For Women, Starting A Makeup Brand, Ecommerce Tips (#280)

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Claus Lauter: This is episode 280 of the e commerce coffee break podcast. Today we talk about how to create a beauty product line online in minutes without any risks. With me on the show, I have Adam Chuntz . He's the co founder and CMO at blankabrand.com. So let's dive right into it. But before we get started, a big thank you to our sponsors for supporting today's episode.

Loyalty Lion is a leading loyalty platform helping Shopify brands rocket returning customers with their own loyalty programs. With Loyalty Lion, it's quick and easy to create a program that uses points and rewards to engage shoppers, secure more second purchases, and drive up lifetime value. Loyalty Lion has been increasing returning customer rates for thousands of Shopify stores for over 10 years.

Visit loyaltylion.com to find out more. Find the link in the show notes. Have you heard about Partner Hero? They're experts in support on the e commerce industry, known for their outstanding team building skills. Their main pillars, quality, people and culture makes them a great fit for your company. Learn more on partnerhero.
com or click the link in the show notes.

This is the eCommerce Coffee Break, a top rated Shopify growth podcast dedicated to Shopify merchants and business owners looking to grow their online stores. Learn how to survive in the fast changing eCommerce world with your host Claus Lauter and get marketing advice you can't find on Google.

Welcome. Welcome

to another episode of the eCommerce Coffee Break. Today we want to find out how you can create a beauty product line online in minutes without any risk. Now, I have absolutely no idea about Brut's products, so I have an expert with me who can really dive deep into that and give us an idea on how that works.

Our guest today is Adam Chuntz . He's the co founder and CMO at blankabrand.com. He is a marketeer based in beautiful Vancouver with a robust background in marketing strategy and creative direction. He has over 20 years of industry experience ranging from running in [00:02:00] his own creative agency to leading marketing and creative teams for retail brands to most recently co founding Blanka, an e commerce tech company focusing on empowering anyone to build their dream branded product online with ease.

So we want to find out more about that. Let's welcome Adam to the show. Hi, Adam. How are you

Adam Chuntz: today? I'm great. Thanks for having me Claus .

Claus Lauter: Adam, share a little bit about yourself, who you serve and why you designed it to start Blanka . My

Adam Chuntz: background, you know, really comes from a space of everything from, you know, full creative direction and design, a really passionate designer.

So that's a big piece of everything here around aesthetic and all that sort of side, as well as marketing. When we realized what marketing is at the end of the day, it's, it's really how people think and how they react and really. Digging into like the human psyche. So combining those two worlds over the last couple of decades for me was really fun.

That turned quickly into us looking at a solution. My two other co founders really looking at the state of the market and what was happening specifically in the beauty industry. We just saw this as something that [00:03:00] was growing like crazy. It's a 430 billion industry right now set to be a 470 or 520, depending on who you're asking.

Billion dollar industry, um, by 2027 and 25 percent of the growth that's happening in that space is small, independent, emerging brands. Now the big players out there that dominate that space, it's nested et cetera. They can't innovate quickly. So that's why there's this big push with independent brands.

And we just saw this moment saying, Hey, our collective experience, you know, we can use independent brands, start and scale brands fast and quickly with really high quality products. That's sort of like spawn why we wanted to start Blanka in the space of the beauty market in particular with really high quality North American made products.

That was a big filter for us.

Claus Lauter: Now, I understand that big celebrities, Rihanna, JLo, Kardashians, they have their beauty lines, they have the power, they have the money behind [00:04:00] that. And I think beauty and cosmetic skincare is also not without any problems because you have to obviously to follow a lot of rules, FTC rules or whatever's coming in there.

Tell me how you do it. How is it possible for small independent brands, creators to create their own beauty line? Well,

Adam Chuntz: beauty, no pun intended. Of Blanka is that we've automated that process. Um, and we've done it with vetting really high quality North American suppliers. So the suppliers that we work with and that we carefully curate our collection of several hundred products, we're almost at 400 products now, is that we have a really strict filter along.

What we put on the platform in that all the suppliers already go through all the testing, you know, the shelf life stability, all the different pieces to get, you know, different approvals and create the actual like stamps of approval that need to happen specifically from, you know, the FDA and things like health Canada, which are some of the strictest regulations in the world, most strict regulations in the world.

So we know that our [00:05:00] products are really high quality. So the sourcing that we do is goes through lots of checks and balances. And also people on our team test and use them every day. So that's kind of a big filter, how we go through that process. But blank in a nutshell, the way that we've done it is that we've set it up to be real risk because not only do we not have any minimums on the platform, so you can start a product line and just minutes and do so without any minimum.

So your overhead cost is next to nothing. Um, but know that you have incredible, high quality products. And then we all handle the logistics and the shipping all the way to the end customer.

Claus Lauter: Now, I have an idea for a beauty line. I'm a small medium enterprise or solo printer, a side hustler, anything like that.

What's the process to get started? What's what's the first thing I need to think about?

Adam Chuntz: Well, it's really simple with BlankArt, you know, we've created a platform that Literally, you sign up, you upload your logo, we generate hundreds of product shots, which are the mockups of your product exactly with your branding on it.

So all you need is a logo. At that [00:06:00] point, you click one button, you connect to your online store, and then you just start selling. As soon as you get an order, it flows right through to us. And then we. Print the logo directly onto those products, and we ship it to the end customer. So as long as you have a logo and a bit of an idea of what you want your website to look like, handle that side of things, you're ready to go with Blanka.

How

Claus Lauter: does it work? Obviously, I, as the final seller, I want to test the product. I want to have a sample. I want to have something in my hands to really feel it and to get an idea of what it is. How does that work?

Adam Chuntz: Yeah. So we sample products. That's definitely one of the first steps that a lot of people take.

We refer to our customers as merchants and the typical life cycle as someone they go through the process and they see what their brand looks like on all the products, but then they also do pick out several samples, order them to themselves to test, to show their friends, to see, you know, what the market reception would be like, and also the main thing is just look at quality of the product.

We make sure they like it. As we all know, with e comm, what you see on the screen and what you see in real life can [00:07:00] differ. We just try really hard to make sure that it's as close to that process as possible with really clear descriptions and visuals and all that sort of stuff.

Claus Lauter: Can you give me an example of a customer stories of yours?

You don't need to tell the brand, but how they got started and where they are nowadays. The

Adam Chuntz: beauty of our platform, and this is probably my favorite part of it, is that we do give anyone the ability. So we really do empower almost anyone to create their own product line. And this happens, we see these stories happen all the time, and one in particular.

This girl that was studying and she was a fitness instructor, she went through this incredible program through the school and she'd already built this incredible community. And she had this, all of this stuff happening her own life already as a fitness instructor, but she realized very quickly that the makeup products she was using were not up to our and at the gym, she wanted to look good and feel good.

So she was sweating through her makeup and Product that we sell, she [00:08:00] really leaned into and realized that it was actually a product. So she's built this entire brand based on this whole solution that one of our products has provided. But because she already had this incredible community and following with her, her clients and all the things she did around fitness, she built this incredible business that has really scaled out not only her existing training platform, but now she sells on this additional full product line to support it.

So seeing her growth over the last few years, she was one of our actual first merchants and she is scaling so quickly. It's absolutely incredible to watch.

Claus Lauter: That's a great story. I mean, just having an idea and already having some kind of audience is a good start there. I can imagine that your products are a good base for any kind of subscription model when it comes to e commerce, because obviously if you have a lipstick that will be gone at some point and people might want to have more, is that something you support as a platform?

Adam Chuntz: Yeah, technically. So we do have several merchants that set up their own [00:09:00] subscription model. So it's more of a recurring process that rolls through on there. When it comes to how our merchants want to show up, we try and give them as much information and guidance along the different e commerce solutions, um, such as subscriptions or bundling, things like that.

We do support it for sure. The nature of having zero minimums is that lead times can vary. So we encourage ordering a bit of inventory that we store on site and ship it so we can turn it around very quickly. So essentially, we turn into like a 3PL or like a shipment facility, rather than just printing on demand and shipping out, which both options work.

But if it's a subscription, We definitely want more of that inventory to be able to turn things around very, very quickly.

Claus Lauter: My experience with beauty, and as I said in the beginning, I'm not really a customer for beauty products, but what I see branding is very, very important. The packaging is important. Um, inserts are important, everything like that.

How do you help with that?

Adam Chuntz: Yeah, that's a great question. And truly it is brand is the number one thing [00:10:00] that differentiates most businesses out there specifically, you know, something like a visual identity to how, you know, they show up from their values and all of the other pieces of a business that other customers will connect with.

Ultimately, we try to provide as much help and detail through blog posts, through some of our marketing opportunities that we sell. To help them kind of grow through and do more brand development, but in that as someone is going through the process of visualizing their logo on products, we provide a little bit of insight into saying how this logo might not look so good on like a really small product.

It might, you might need to kind of remove this or tweak that. Um, so we do provide a lot of that kind of direct feedback. In addition, we also have the ability to do a full design for them if they want. So we offer like logo design services and things like that. With brand, as you were mentioning, it's, it's really, really important for that differentiation, specifically for, you know, a solution like ours.

[00:11:00] You're essentially selling the same product to someone else, but your brand and your positioning can totally differentiate how you sit in the market where your audience sits. Branding is really, really important.

Claus Lauter: And now a quick break to thank the sponsors of today's episode. Tired of watching customer drift away after their first purchase?

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Find the link in the show notes. As a prominent player in the e commerce support arena, Partner Hero specializes in delivering [00:12:00] personalized customer experience solutions. With a clear focus on helping you not just meet but exceed your goals and requirements, they have become experts in e commerce support.

Their commitment to tailoring solutions to your unique needs ensures that your support experience is nothing short of exceptional. Partner Hero is more than a CX company. They are your partner in success. Visit their website and learn more on partnerhero. com A lot of listeners might now be curious and try to find out how much money they can make.

Can you give me an idea about profit margins? What's possible? Well,

Adam Chuntz: it's a subscription platform to access. So it's a monthly fee. It's really nominal. Our plans range from free all the way to 99 a month. And you can do anything you want in that range. Our costs are really low specifically for. You know, having zero minimums.

That's a massive factor. If you were to look at finding a traditional supplier, we have to order thousands of products at a minimum that would cost you lots of money. Um, so we kind of take that burden as well. They're generally are markup [00:13:00] like what most. Of our merchants markup, the cost of the product that we sell them is at least four to five times.

That's entirely up to what the merchant wants to do in terms of how they're going to position the brand. We do recommend a markup. The one we do recommend is a typical sort of retail markup. It's about four times what the actual product costs would be. But again, it all depends on who your audience is and where that can sit.

So you do stand to make a lot of profit. That way you can just take all those extra dollars and focus on sales and marketing and bring it to life.

Claus Lauter: Yeah, I think it's particularly important nowadays as ad costs are rising and they will never go back to cheaper prices that you have a good profit margin there.

And if you have a product that you can, as I said, four or five times, this is easily be doable. Um, that's really a good business concept. Let's talk a little bit about the technical side of things about integrations. Most of our listeners run Shopify stores or any other kind of online stores that might be WooCommerce.

With whom do you integrate and what's kind of the integration [00:14:00] process and then the onboarding process?

Adam Chuntz: Yeah, integrations are, are crucial to a business like ours specifically. You know, we directly went to Shopify from the beginning. Uh, about 70 or so percent of our customer base is based on Shopify. The integration is super simple.

We have a one click installation. You can either download it directly or add it directly through the Shopify app ecosystem, or just by visiting our website and then clicking from there. It's shared pretty easy as long as you have a store set up. If you don't have a store set up during that onboarding process of adding the app, it will ask you to also create the store on Shopify itself.

As soon as it's connected, we have access to send and receive order information, send and receive product information, such as all the images. The descriptions, the pricing, all that sort of stuff and everything that you would need on that side. So it's completely integrated from, you know, one click, essentially that shop five.

We do directly integrate with Wix as well, which is another big and fast [00:15:00] growing e commerce platform that people are now leaning into as far as other options. And as always, as an open source and very focused on a lot of like democratization of e commerce, although smaller, it's been around for a long time.

We do directly integrate there. In addition, we have an open API, so we plug into several kind of third party platforms as well, very easily. And then last but not least, we can always do a sort of manual integration with more of a custom e commerce platform.

Claus Lauter: Who's your perfect customer or better said, who do you serve?

Is it all the United States, other countries, where, where can I use Blanka?

Adam Chuntz: Like us global end of the day, we ship all over the world, minus just a few countries that are very difficult to ship cosmetics and beauty products into due to different legislation and regulations. The majority of our customer base is from the U S.

Um, so we do ship traditionally, mostly in the U S well, as Europe is a big [00:16:00] bucket as well in the middle East. We actually have quite a lot of customers there. And then through kind of Asia or Eurasia areas around Australia, we've got a lot of customers down there as well. Quite often we are shipping very global, though the nature of e commerce is it depends on who finds you where and where you're going to ultimately ship to outside of, you know, geography, our core customer base at the moment is really around entrepreneurs, net new entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, anyone that's looking for a side hustle, as you mentioned in the beginning.

Really? We do provide that solution. The next big market are beauty professionals. So anyone say a makeup artist or an esthetician or say a salon owner that wants to, instead of selling someone else's products or promoting someone else's, they want to sell and promote their own. This is a great way for them to get their foot in the door, um, and start building their own product line and using it on their own customers as well, proving, uh, the quality and all that sort of stuff.

So that's the best way for them to bring that to life. And then the third is [00:17:00] really on cut on the more of the creator side of things. So creators and influencers. Same reasoning instead of promoting someone else's products, why not promote their own and go through that where we've seen this in more of the apparel industry a little bit over the last couple of years, a lot of creators are starting to sell their own apparel.

Um, essentially, we're doing the same thing, but with beauty products and then the last but not least is existing brands. So we have, say, a clothing company that wants to have a line extension or test the market with, say, a new type of product. Um, they would come to us and say, do a skincare line. And we do provide that at very low risk compared to the normal way.

They would have to do so.

Claus Lauter: Now it's really democratizes the markets here. One question I forgot to ask earlier is do you only serve with your products women or also men?

Adam Chuntz: No, we have a good chunk of male customers on our platform as well. It's actually amazing the variety of the types of people that are on there selling.

We do have men's products as [00:18:00] well, but we do have a lot of. Anyone selling almost any type of product. So we do a men's line that does shaving and beard and hair products and solid colognes and all sorts of stuff on that side, as well as full skincare. And then on the other side of things, we have lots of different skincare options that are, you know, gender agnostic, um, like lots of different stuff there from serums to facial procedures and all of that, and then normal color cosmetics.

So it really depends on. Who your end audience is, however, that comes to light.

Claus Lauter: Okay, that makes perfect sense. Before we come to the end of the coffee break today, is there anything that you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered

Adam Chuntz: yet? The importance of creating something unique. You know, we talked a little bit about brand and differentiation earlier.

You know, how else do you win out there? It's one of those things of creating differentiation and finding the moments that really make success, especially in e comm. It's so busy. It's so saturated. So how do you do that? And some of the things that we've seen be really successful on our [00:19:00] platform are really limiting the amount of SKUs.

So getting a few hero products on your website, instead of saying, oh, adding 30, 40, 50 of all these products, one to five SKUs is where that real sweet spot is and making that the hero. Sure, within that product, you can have different colors and different variations, but it allows you to really nail down that storytelling and what you bring that product to life, how you bring that product to life.

Uh, which allows you to create a story really around your brand and like why you're selling that product to really curate what you're selling. And then beyond that, it's having that community. So building the community first really helps, obviously, from the creator side of things and some of the beauty professionals there to have that community they can lead into.

From there, you could always build community with really unique, uh, approaches and just being more guerrilla and focusing on like, you know, unique ways to bring, bring brands to life, not just online. I think omni channel is super, super important these days, not just online. You're also doing things like [00:20:00] pop ups and events.

And maybe you have a small retail table, say a local store that's on more of a small side of things. So I think like, you know, the collective there, all those different things together, it really helps set you up for success rather than just trying to rely on, Oh, I'm going to create something and put a logo on it.

I'm going to put hundreds of products on the online and someone's going to find it. That's not really how you're going to succeed. It could happen, but it's better to be Yeah.

Claus Lauter: I think you just give me and our listeners a complete masterclass there on how to build a beauty brand online and also on how not to do it.

Um, I think the last bit to say, not just throw a hundred of products online and hope for the best that usually doesn't work, but building a brand with storytelling, that's great advice. Where can people find out more about

Adam Chuntz: you? You can visit the website at BlankaBrand. com, that's Blanka with a K, that's the easiest way to find us, or just googling Blanka Beauty Products and we'll show up.

And that's it. All the information is [00:21:00] there, or find us on any of the Shopify or Wix app stores, very easy to find there as well.

Claus Lauter: Okay. I will put the links in the show notes as always, then you just one click away, Adam. Thanks so much for giving us an overview. Um, I said, I learned a lot duty product is a huge market.

I know that, but I didn't know that it is so easy to get into the market. Thanks so much for your time today. Thank

Adam Chuntz: you, Klaus. Appreciate it.

Claus Lauter: Hey Klaus here. Thanks for joining me on another episode of the e commerce coffee break podcast. Before you go, I'd like to ask two things from you. First, please help me with the algorithm so I can bring more impactful guests on the show.

It will make it also easier for others to discover the podcast. Simply like, comment and subscribe in the app you're using to podcast and even better if you could leave a rating. Secondly, please take a moment to check out today's episode sponsors. They play a crucial role in keeping the show and our newsletter available to you for free.

Thanks again and I catch you in the next episode. Have a good one. Before you leave, don't forget to visit the sponsor of today's episode. Have you heard about Partner Hero? They're experts in support on the e commerce industry, known for their [00:22:00] outstanding team building skills. Their main pillars, quality, people, and culture makes them a great fit for your company.

Learn more on partnerhero. com or click the link in the show notes. Loyalty Lion is a leading loyalty platform helping Shopify brands rocket returning customers with their own loyalty programs. With Loyalty Lion, it's quick and easy to create a program that uses points and rewards to engage shoppers, secure more second purchases, and drive up lifetime value.

Loyalty Lion has been increasing returning customer rates for thousands of Shopify stores for over 10 years. Visit loyaltylion. com to find out more. Find a link in the show notes.