How Cooki Haircare Turned Community Demand into National Distribution, with Jaimee Vilela, Managing Director, Cooki Haircare

Speaker A: Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf APAC Edition, where we explore the unique challenges

Speaker B: and opportunities shaping digital commerce across Asia

Speaker A: Pacific with insights from the region's top experts. Hello and uh, welcome back to Unpacking the Digital the APAC edition. Today we're exploring a different kind of growth story. Many brands spend years trying to get onto retail shelves. They pitch buyers, they fight for space, and they hope their products will move once they finally land there. But what if you flipped that model? What if you built so much demand digitally that retailers wanted your products on their shelves? Today's guest has done exactly that. Jamie Villella is the managing director of Cookie Hair Care, a fast growing hair care brand that began as a small e commerce business she acquired a few short years ago. At the time, the business was doing just four sales a day. Since the acquisition, Jamie and her team have scaled Cookie into a multimillion dollar brand powered by a passionate community of customers. Demand has grown so strongly that the brand is now ranged across the Govider retail network in Australia. What makes this story particularly interesting is Jamie's own journey. She started her career in journalism and content, moved into full funnel marketing, worked with major retail and beauty brands, and then made the leap into entrepreneurship by acquiring a small e commerce business which she is now scaling. All of this has led her to be named in the 2026 Inside Retail Top 50 People in E Commerce. In today's episode, we're going to unpack what it's really like to buy and scale an e commerce business. And let me tell you, it's not all fun and games. How to build a brand through community and conversation, how to drive digital demand and how that can open the door to retail distribution and what big brands can learn from startup operators like Cookie. Okay, that was a really big introduction. Indeed. So, Jamie, welcome to the pod. I'm so excited for this conversation today.

Speaker B: Uh, thank you so much, Teresa. I'm very excited to be chatting with you.

Speaker A: Me too. All right, so let's start with your background. I've provided a bit of context, but as I mentioned, you began your career in journalism and publishing, then you moved into marketing roles with major brands like David Jones before consulting to a fast growing beauty brand. How did that journey lead you to eventually buying and scaling your own e commerce brand?

Speaker B: It is so funny. I really kind of started in journalism and then like every sort of person that was doing content writing fell into content marketing around 2015-18 when that became what everyone was doing. And then at Westfield got the opportunity to end up leading their digital team of 12. So it was full funnel marketing. But I actually made a really decisive move, um, when I was at Westfield to leave and to go and get a job in E Commerce because my dream was to have an E Commerce brand of my own one day. And so it was, uh, a really interesting situation because I chose to take a salary cut, lost the big team, the big budgets, and went and worked as a team of one. So the first staff member at a flower gifting startup where I learned from two phenomenal entrepreneurs and just being on the tools, learning Shopify, Klaviyo, everything from scratch from, you know, two people who had done this a couple of times really successfully was the best possible dunk into D.C. i could have had M. And there I ended up working for a couple of other brands as well in beauty, also in D2C. And then they were making their way into retail. And so I sort of just had this perfect two and a half years in D2C marketing, where I learned the tools, learned the ropes and was poised to then be able to take on something of our own. And sort of, uh, alongside that, my husband happens to be a really talented sort of operations and finance person. And he was working as the head of strategy for the online, uh, business at Woolworths at the time. And he said, look, you're never going to be able to start a business from scratch when you're working for this rapidly scaling beauty brand. Why don't we buy a tiny business and scale it and then you can do a day a week on that and just kind of see how it goes. I thought this was insane because when you think, buy a business, I'm um, thinking like 1980 car phones, Wolf of Wall street, like $250 million. And it just didn't occur to me that there was this thriving business behind the scenes of flipping little E comms and people are buying small businesses all the time. I hadn't heard of Cody Sanchez at that time or any of those other people online who are talking about buying a business. And I thought, oh, how? What an interesting idea from him. And we have really complimentary skills. We always joke that if we were to be thrown into a startup accelerator with a bunch of other people, we are the two skill sets that you would put together to start a business.

Speaker A: Yeah, you like a dream team. Really?

Speaker B: It's so hilarious. Uh, I really got a 2 for 1 deal with that marriage. And so yeah, basically I on the side was consulting still and doing freelancing and I was actually freelance editing The Australia issue of InStyle M. I vividly remember in 2023 they sent me an article on shampoo bars because it was all about sustainable swaps. So it was, you know, swapping linen for hemp and, you know, swapping bottles for bars. And they were talking about how Loewe had done soap on a rope and Glossier were doing face bars and bars are back. And I just had never heard of, used or seen a shampoo bar, uh, in my life. And I'd been in beauty for years. Never observed them in the supermarkets or the pharmacies or the health shops. Just hadn't come across when it wasn't in my world. And I thought, oh, how fascinating. What a cool product. Banked that. And then months later, when Lucas and I started looking for a small business to buy, the first one that piqued my attention was a tiny shampoo bar company.

Speaker A: Isn't that amazing? It's like a sliding door moment, isn't it really? Who would have thought that journey would take you to buying Absolutely, um, Cookie, which as you've mentioned, is a shampoo, um, bar, isn't it essentially for our listeners so they understand what Cookie actually is.

Speaker B: Absolutely. So we ended up buying a small shampoo bar business and they were doing about four sales a day. And what I fell in love with really was the product. And I think there's two ways you can look at acquiring a business. You know, you can buy a small business that just has a great brand and a great Instagram following, for example, but where you have to reinvent the product from scratch. In my case, I inherited a, ah, small but loyal community and a phenomenal product. So this shampoo bar is sort of like if you, you know, flip the back of your shampoo bottle in the shower, you'll see the first ingredient is aqua water. So a bottle of shampoo is about 80% water. If you take water out, what's left is a shampoo bar and you basically add your own water at home. And so one bar equals three bottles. But what shocked me was that they foamed M actually lathered up and worked identically to a salon quality liquid shampoo. And I thought, this is cool. This. I knew it was an emerging category. I love beauty, I love hair care. And um, it also dovetailed really nicely onto my own health journey because I have stage four endometriosis and I tried to reduce chemicals and toxins in my products. And natural hair care is a really tough category to navigate because a lot of them are waxy. Don't leather very unrewarding. And these bars actually worked for me. So it was a no brainer. We didn't even look at other businesses. We ended up buying that one and scaling it.

Speaker A: Wow. Amazing. And so how did you evaluate whether it was worth buying? I mean you clearly you understood this was an emerging category. You really liked the product and felt that it had really good market fit. But how did you go about making that decision to acquire it? And then once you acquired it, what were some of the first changes that you made to start to unlock and scale growth?

Speaker B: Well, it is at this point that I bring in my secret weapon husband Lucas, who has a background in mergers and acquisitions. So he is still does consulting on helping other brands figure out whether to buy this brand or not. So he, he can do a full professional due diligence on a brand. So he's looking at the financials, the repeat rate, you know, any, any things in the business that might be worth taking a second look at before you invest. Um, and so we looked at it together and I was obviously looking at it from a marketing, product and positioning perspective and he was looking at it in terms of the back end, whether there was, you know, existing debt in the business, you know, how clean it all looked, whether there was room in the business model for, you know, margin, for paid ads and for growth. Because I think for a lot of small businesses, uh, there isn't that sort of thinking set up. But we were really fortunate that the founder of Cookie is a wonderful e commerce operator in her own. She actually works in E Comm still and so she just done a phenomenal job with the base layer of that biz. Yeah, it was ripe for repositioning and scale. But to your point, around what we changed, really the brand at that point was not sort of design led and it hadn't been professionally positioned. So the founder, um, was you know, doing that on the side and she'd kind of designed the logo herself and it had all been done in house. Um, and so I thought, wow, there's actually a really great opportunity just to polish this up a bit and it could, it could grow, you know, really quickly. And so uh, what I did was I took on the biz. I ran it for a few months as it was just to get a feel for the customer. I think I always liken it to renovating a house. Don't walk in with your hammer swinging. You walk in and live with it.

Speaker A: I love that.

Speaker B: Uh, live with it for a while. Ye, you figure out where the couch

Speaker A: should Go, yes, you might have some hypotheses around things that might need to change, but don't start swinging the hammer at the first thing that you say.

Speaker B: Yeah, because it's so disrespectful to the existing base that's being built and you don't want to alienate that customer and you want to know what you're doing and why you're doing it. So I am a fast mover, but in this case, I actually really took my time and I interviewed a lot of customers. So I just got on the phone with them, people that had bought from us a number of times. What do you love about it? How did you find us? What would you be really horrified if we ever launch, you know, to shop us? All these things started to surface and we actually managed to grow the business from four sales a day to 40 sales a day on the old brand within a few months. So that was through meta ads. So I didn't need to, you know, rebrand the logo or the packaging, which was all a sage green. Every. Every bar. We have about, uh, 12 bar, uh, products and all different colors and scents. Cinnamon, argan, purple toning, but they were all in green packaging. And so it was quite tricky for our poor warehouse to pick and pack, but it was also quite tricky for the customer. And I was thinking with my retail hat on. So even though it was all like that, we managed to scale pretty quickly on D2C. But then from there I ran a full rebrand and so basically did a bunch of focus groups, which I've consulted to other brands to do in the past and really enjoy doing. So bring in people that aren't your customers, and you just kind of get friends of friends of friends, offer them a voucher or a box of product and get them on a zoom. And it's a really wacky experience for everyone involved, but everyone loves them because it's a very interactive session and you're just trying to get to the bottom of why wouldn't people buy a product like this? You know, I gave them a few different packaging options of what they would and wouldn't buy. Um, where do you shop now, what frustrates you about beauty, etc. Price point. And from that I was able to confirm all of my own hypotheses about where this brand needed to go. M. Yes, we'd inherited an older demographic because I think, again, the packaging was very simple and quite nondescript and it wasn't trying to appeal to a young customer. And so I thought, you know, What? I don't want to alienate this demo, but I want to bring them with me and broaden the potential. And so we came full color but we still kept it pretty minimal and simple and true to the brand ethos. Um, I gave it a new brand platform which is good, clean, fun because the products are uh, you know, good for the planet, being plastic free, clean ingredients and actually fun to use. That's called cookie because the bars look like macarons. And so from there we, you know, redid the packaging, uh, started making UGC content, you know, ad content that looked like the customer, which resonated really well and updated all the copy on the website. I obviously have a background in copywriting. I'm really passionate about copy and how copy connects. And we just started revamping this thing. Um, and as part of that, the only thing I did dramatically change in the formulations was I reformulated the conditioner bars from scratch.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I love that story. I think that, you know, we see if we look at bigger brands, often they're not, you know, their marketing teams aren't getting up close and personal with the customer base or the end shopper who is buying the product. Often we can be looking at data and insight and not necessarily, you know, spending uh, the time as marketers really diving deeper and understanding the why behind some of the decisions that customers are making. So I love the fact that you spent the uh, a stack of time talking to your customers and it's so basic. But I feel like that increasingly that that art is lost from a marketing perspective, particularly the bigger the brand.

Speaker B: I couldn't agree more. And it's funny you say that because the number of peers in E commerce who I've encouraged to do this, I say just focus group. No one wants, no, they don't do it.

Speaker A: No, they don't do it. And it's like, I mean when I was a cmo, I used to encourage my team all the time. I used to have what was called the customer mandate which was uh, once a month you had to do something that puts yourself in front of the customer. And we would then share it amongst our marketing team within our uh, team meetings. And it was so interesting in terms of you would see the light go on and just how much that was shifting their thinking.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: But I think today so many, whether you're a business owner or a leader running uh, an organization and business like yourself, or whether you're working for a large brand, we're just so busy, we lose sight of what's really important, which is the customer that we are ultimately serving.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. And I think insights have really stayed with me. I should be doing it more. I should be doing it.

Speaker A: You'll get off this call or this, uh, this podcast recording today and you'll be like, okay, I've got to go

Speaker B: back and do some more of that. I probably will. What I have set up in the meantime is that I have a closed group of some of our most loyal customers and we've got about 3,000 in there and I poll them all the time and so I have those one to one interactions sort written but it would be nice to jump on a zoom again and make and have some

Speaker A: more in depth conversations. So that's a really good segue actually because I want to talk a little bit more about community. One of the most interesting aspects of Cookie is the community that you've built around the brand. You've built thousands of uh, five star reviews from that community and your customers and a really highly engaged audience. Despite the fact that your computer, your community is still quite small. You know, you just talked about there's about 3,000 of them. So talk to us a bit about how you've built and nurtured that community and how that's really supporting your ability to evolve the brand and, and grow and scale the business.

Speaker B: Yeah, so we have like, like we said, we have the small group of about 3,000 in a closed group and that's my superfans. And you know, they hear about product launches first and I poll them on new products and I'm very there and they're very authentic with me back. And it's really kind of an amazing relationship that we have with these people.

Speaker A: They probably think they know you personally. They or they feel they know you personally.

Speaker B: Kind of do, yeah, I kind of know them. It's wild. I know so many of them by name. I, you know, it's, it's a really lovely thing. And then we obviously have our Instagram following and then we have our database. But I think to the point around, you know, copy and connection, um, the way that the tone of voice of the brand creates connection.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: I think that's been one of our sort of secret sauce through the whole journey because, you know, for the first couple of years I was personally moderating every single ad comment. Um, and I wasn't using templates, I was replying to them like a person. And that's quite shocking, uh, for people to hear from brand like a person because l' Oreal wouldn't do that necessarily. It would be kind of weird if they did when you're really small.

Speaker A: If it was, it wouldn't be the, you know, the CEO doing it. It would be somebody in probably notice center.

Speaker B: I would wager that is probably tr. And so as a really small brand, I had the luxury of being able to do that. And I kind of shocked people because then they felt like they knew us because we were replying like a person and signing off with our name. So that was really interesting. And same thing with the way that we treated basic customer interactions, like customer service emails. So I managed our customer service for the first about a year and a half. Um, and I would have these lengthy back and forths with the customer. It wasn't just trying to template them and shut it down and archive it and tick it off. You know, we go back and forth asking about all sorts of things and I'd get, you know, product info requests from them and what do you want to see from us next? But I would hear why, why you're scared of bars and what you didn't like about the experience and all of that would inform us. But I think across the whole thing, copy the way, the tone of voice, the way we speak with the customer, the way we choose to interact on traditional platforms in an untraditional way, all of this has led to this very warm and fuzzy community sense. And so I think people are bizarrely connected to our brand in a way that isn't immediately obvious on the surface, but which we are very grateful for. And that has driven loyalty, repeat purchase, and superfans who have pulled the product through the store at a very swift rate and sort of become this retail case study for us, I think, yeah, it's, it's honestly boiling it down. It's being a human being and it's about other ones. And we do that really well.

Speaker A: And I think that, uh, you know, on the basis of what you're talking about, to me you're really demonstrating that the community feels heard first and foremost. There are so many brands that seek feedback but do not necessarily act on it. And so, you know, I think the difference here and why you've been so successful so far is that, uh, you've actively tapped into that community, used it to drive decisions they feel heard because they can see it in the changes that you make from a product perspective right through to where you're stocked from a retail point of view, which we'll talk more about in a moment. I think the second really interesting Thing is the mindset that you've adopted as you've gone on this journey because it sounds like at every step of this journey you've looked to engage the community in an active way and you've had an appetite and interest in everything that they have to say, both good and bad. Because it's one thing to solicit the feedback, it's another to be prepared for the good, the bad and the ugly and want to actually do something about it. Because I assume not all the feedback has been good.

Speaker B: Absolutely not. People are really shocked when using bars for the first time. I mean, conditioner from a bar is a really jarring experience if you don't know what to expect because it's not going to be a thick cream. Similarly, a really fortunately, really small percentage of the population don't tolerate essential oils well on the scalp. And so occasionally someone might have a bad reaction to one of our bars with a strong essential oil in it for, you know, driving hair growth or something like that. Yes. I've had situations where we'll get, you know, a volley of hate and I will call that customer myself and have like a 27 minute chat with them.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: And by the end they feel heard. I feel good about, you know, correcting the record there.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And they go on to tell their. I mean, I've had so many of these conversations, but there was one lady that was very, very angry at us. I think it was maybe a shipping issue or something like that. And, um, I called her and just gave a really human response. And then she came back and said, oh, actually, you didn't deserve that. I'm going through hell. And she shared a bit about what was going on in her life and this really lovely back and forth. And she's now like one of the most verbal people in our closed group and she's always cheering us on. And so many people would have just like archived that customer and sent them m a template. I am so sorry. And I just. Yeah, it's obviously not scalable. But the cool thing is when you're tiny is you can do things that aren't, uh, scalable that then absolutely. That does scale. And so, yeah, some of those learnings

Speaker A: you can even apply to a larger business or being part of a bigger brand, that surprise and delight. I would pick up the phone for a select few people to try and understand what we might have done wrong and try, you know, try to turn that customer from a negative experience into a positive experience. So I agree it is hard. It's not Scalable. But there are ways that larger brands could adopt a similar approach which drives brand advocacy like you've just talked about.

Speaker B: Absolutely. I call it going deep. And a few times a week I'll try and jump into a customer thread myself or m call someone myself. And I still try and do that a few times a week into a surprise and delight. Because it does still mean that a few people at least are having that same early cooking.

Speaker A: That's right, exactly. And they're more likely then to amplify and it acts as a bit of a flywheel from a brand advocacy point of view. So we were just touching on the role of community and we touched a little bit on the retail piece. So I want to dive a little bit deeper into that because I think it's really fascinating to unpack as part of your journey and growth story. So retail expansion for you. As I mentioned earlier, you're now stocked within, uh, many Go Vita stores across Australia. But the way that you entered those, um, that retail network is probably not the traditional path that many brands would take. So do you want to tell us a little bit more about how did you get ranged across. Is it now every Go Vita store across Australia?

Speaker B: I believe it's every store. And then we're also in, you know, over 130 indies. So we're in about 240 stores. Yeah.

Speaker A: Great. So tell us how you did it.

Speaker B: Of course it started with our closed group. Uh, so I said to them In November of 2024, I, I did a little poll and I said, hi everyone. I know that a lot of you are asking for us to go into stores for the first time. And at that point we were in maybe 10 just little indie health or gift shops. And so I said, where do you want to shop us? And I was really open to what they might say. I thought, you know, this could be Kenneth's warehouse, it could be pharmacy, it could be grocery. I don't know what they're going to suggest. And it was, it's good open mind.

Speaker A: You went in open mind. You know, you weren't kind of fixated on I need my products on this shelf.

Speaker B: No, because I think we, I, uh, my hypothesis was that it is health. We are a fun dessert adjacent brand. And you don't see that very much in a health context. You see that a lot in grocery. But uh, I love that the founder uh, of Cookie had taken the sort of cookie macaron fun, desserty approach back when she founded it in 2020. And I thought, you know what that's quite fun. And health. And so I thought it had health legs, but let's go. And so I said, where do you want to shop us? And it was health food. Health food, health food. But specifically Go Vita. Go Vita. Go Vita. Go Vita. And Go Vita was such a resounding response that I didn't even have to Google think about it. It was like, well, Go Vita it shall be. And that is where.

Speaker A: How do I get in there?

Speaker B: How do I get in there? And I vividly reckon, I wonder if the CEO will hear this, but I remember stalking the CEO Ann Catalan on LinkedIn, who was just a phenomenal CEO and operator and wonderful human being. I remember looking at her on LinkedIn and I was like, who do I know that knows her? And yes, what can I do?

Speaker A: Because you get requests all the time. How do I cut through exactly? Why us?

Speaker B: Luckily for me, Govita is actually a co op of about 110 stores. So that means that they have a national buyer and the Govider Warehouse, which is also a distributor, uh, across Govita and about 300 other indie health stores across Australia. So their reaches, you know, four to 500 stores, but they are able to curate about 30% of their range at the local store level. While 70% is ideally sort of from the warehouse. There's a small part of the buy where they will just trial things on shelf and they'll localize it to their demographic and what will, you know, create foot traffic and interest. And so once I figured that out, basically January of last year, I just started calling stores. Me personally, I think I phoned about 50. And then I hired someone to help me because it started going quite well. So I hired a bubbly Gen Z to jump on the phone and, um, we. So I managed to get samples out to 87 stores. And I just said, look, would you give us a go? We're small, we'll make it easy for you. Here's who we are. Would you give us a try? And you know, it took, you know, go via Southland and Go Vita. Balinese said yes at the very start. They were my first two. And I went up and thanked them in person at Govider conference. I said, gosh, you guys took a big risk on us and it took you saying yes for this to spiral. And if you hadn't, you know, someone's m going to be your first. Yes. So thank you. And, um, they, we got into about 30 stores by July and it started moving because then I had this, you know, quite big database of people who bought the products multiple times, and they hated paying shipping.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: So I emailed them all and I said, good news, we're at Select Goiters. If we're not at your local yet, please let me know and we'll pitch them. Which I already was background, but at least I would prioritize their ones. Um, and so they got all excited and then I started running meta ads that said, shop us at Select Go Vitas with me, you know, very excitedly seeing us on shelf for the first time at my local in Merrickville. I'd never seen our products on a shelf before in person. And it was a very, um, heartwarming video. A lot of people have seen that video now. And, um, so then what I didn't expect is that people firstly don't read the word select and therefore assume we are already, in fact the full range on top of every store in the land. And so I sparked an accidental. What is it, a revolution? Is it an onslaught, uh, where Cookie customers were literally like, storming the doors of Govider stores around the nation. M asking why we weren't there yet. Um, and I.

Speaker A: Which is positive. Which is positive, but also a challenge. Right? Because all of a sudden I'm frustrated because I go to the store and. And Cookie's not actually on the shelf.

Speaker B: But that's when our very human tone of voice comes in because I'm like, oh my gosh. I know. I'm trying so hard to get into that. You call Cheryl. I've tried calling Cheryl myself. You know, they were then super excited because they were like, challenge accepted. We're in cahoots. Let's do it. And so I had like, almost had like a field team of customers who I didn't. With no organization or planning from me, but they were dming me and being like, I've gone in and asked this one. You should follow them up. I love got bigger than all of us.

Speaker A: That is fandom. Like, that is, you know, that, that shows you've. You've built a real emotional connection beyond, you know, just a, uh, you know, the, the product playing a practical role in people's lives.

Speaker B: And with Shampoo, that's quite funny because a lot of people see Shampoo as a very, you know, tactical product. It's not a, it's not a heartfelt connection you have with your shampoo bottle.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker B: There sure is. And so what it meant was that we got into 30 stores quite quickly. Um, so by sort of mid year, we were in 30 within about six months. And the Products were moving, they were moving fast. And so we got really lucky. And the national buyer, Greg, he reached out to me on a cold email in July and just said, we need to talk about ranging your product at our warehouse. And so we were then in a wonderful position to be able to, you know, go into with, go in with them for distribution and get into all stores. But what I hadn't appreciated is that when people go into the warehouse, normally you just sit there and it takes quite a long time to get all of those stores to pick you up.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And I was probably quite.

Speaker A: Again, the individual makes a decision in a co op, right?

Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. And so I was probably quite naive, but I knew we'd sent samples to 87 of the stores by the time I got that email. I, uh, was then thrown onto a side quest which was, um, you know, just hilarious things. D2C. Things such as seven of our best selling accessories were not boxed or barcoded because they were being placed by a pick packet into the box and going to a D2C customer. So I had like seven packaging projects land on me like that, um, which was very stressful. Don't recommend it. Get your things barcoded. It was just these hilarious, very small brand problems. But we were not expecting to go into hundreds of stores that quickly. And so we landed in the warehouse the 1st of September and in the first month we got picked up by 100 stores.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: Um, and Greg said, I have not seen this in 12 years. Like I've never seen an indie brand get that kind of pickup across the stores, but that sell through in the stores. So the velocity we're doing in stores now has just blown our minds. And I think again it's because right customer, right channel, um, engaged audience, really surrounded by a lot of investment in digital advertising.

Speaker A: That's what I was going to say. You've developed digital demand.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: If any brand is listening and they still are not convinced that digital drives in store sales.

Speaker B: Oh my goodness.

Speaker A: Moment to understand.

Speaker B: Oh my goodness is your proof point

Speaker A: to realize that so much of the discovery and inspiration, um, that shoppers gain today is from digital. Right. Whether it's social media or otherwise. And that is absolutely influencing the in store transaction more often than most, um, leaders think and understand.

Speaker B: I could not agree more. And what I found so fascinating is because we've kept our strategy very lean at Cookie because there was one of me in marketing and pretty much is one and a half of me in marketing. Um, I, you know, I haven't used agencies we don't have agencies on retainer. I manage the ads myself. You know, the content, I'm overseeing that with a part timer. So we run really lean and as part of that we have been able to attribute really cleanly around what, what sale is coming from which channel. And so because we run a really lean team where I buy the ads myself and you know, we're keeping minimal channels. It's mainly meta for our acquisition. Uh, I am able to then track the direct on flow of the digital spend into stores. And what's been really fascinating to observe is that our online sales have actually doubled again this year in the last few months from last year, which has been wonderful, which is awesome.

Speaker A: Yeah, we're really grateful.

Speaker B: What's bizarre is that our Go Vita sales doubled in line at the same time. And so I can see this like almost week to week difference in as you double, you know, the D2C side of the business, the retail side. M also and it's really interesting. So I've worked for other beauty brands who've had this D2C into retail transition and I've noticed it multiple times that

Speaker A: uh, you know, the reverse would be true as well. The reality is I might see the product, trial the product from Go Vita and then that might, you know, compel me to then want to build a deeper connection directly with the brand or buy bigger volume and so on.

Speaker B: Black Friday.

Speaker A: That's right. Exactly. Yeah. Again, which reinforces the importance of the omnichannel approach. Uh, no matter if you are a large or smaller brand, it's just phenomenal success and you should be really proud of what it is that you're building, um, with Cookie. So, having worked inside large corporates and for larger brands, as well as having worked within retail and now moving across to run your own fast growing startup brand, what do you think big brands can learn from smaller brands like Cookie?

Speaker B: It's such a good question and I think it goes back to our earlier conversation around getting closer to the customer. Um, so there's all these stereotypes around. You know, in corporate there is more red tape, there are more stakeholders. If you're a public listed company, of course there are going to be other considerations. You can't just do what you want and we need to respect that. And that's a different operating context. But I do think that there is still a lot to be learned from the small brand approach in terms of, uh, getting direct customer relationships and feedback. So anyone from a big company can still choose to call five highly engaged repeat customers.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Have that data, uh, or you can crowdsource it and getting in front of them, asking them what they want to see, co creating, you know, product strategy so that you can get to the better outcome. And I also think it just from that perspective of moving quickly again, it's a stereotype that corporate doesn't and maybe can't. I would question how can you create a culture internally where you can make more real time decisions in line with market trends, social trends, what the customer is telling you, how can you reverse a failure quickly? M those things are uh, something that you have to as a senior leader be mindful of how to bake into a culture. And if you've got a team of people under you who you know, aren't comfortable with failure or don't feel comfortable walking back a decision if it hasn't resonated that that's going to be tricky for you to change that culture. So I think it is. It's being as a leader, thoughtful around how can I set a culture where we can be more responsive even if we've got a lot of stakeholders and we need sign off from legal?

Speaker A: It's so interesting. I was reading um, some research the other day which pointed to uh, the fact that on TikTok some trends are as short as 72 hours. And so that agility piece is really important. Right. If we are to tap into um, cultural trends that are emerging on social media, we need that agility in our operating approach. So I think that's a really great one, um, to share as kind of something that, that bigger brands need to think about. Um, Jamie, it's been so fascinating this conversation. Um, so thank you so much for joining us uh, on the POD today and I really want to take the opportunity to wish you the best of luck as you continue to grow and scale the brand. I believe you have some really exciting plans coming for growth in the next kind of 12 to 24 months. So um, I really want to take the opportunity to thank you and wish you the best of luck with all of that.

Speaker B: Thank you so much Teresa. It's been a really fun conversation and I, yeah, I hope it's ah, something that will make people reflect on different ways to approach retail as well.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And thanks always to our listeners for tuning in to Unpacking the digital shelf, the APAC edition with me, Teresa Spurdy, Sam.