The Startup CPG Podcast

Justin Wolff
I had never been in the beauty category before, but I had been in the social enterprise space and what I saw at the time was the sort of meteoric rise of what we'll call clean beauty. I almost will feel like putting hair quotes around the word clean because it was such a difficult term to really define. I think even today it's hard to really say. You know, if you were to ask someone, what is clean beauty? You'll get probably ten different answers. But what I felt at the time was clean beauty. Really, the conversation revolved around formula, sort of. The conversation ended with formulas. So clean beauty is all about creating formulas that are good for people and planet, which I think is great.

00:48
Grace Kennedy
Hey startup CPG listeners, this is Grace here with another founder feature. Today I interview Justin Wolf who is the co founder of Junk Theory. Junk theory is a beauty brand that is on a mission to end the plastic era in beauty. They make cleaned products and they are packaged in aluminum bottles without any single use. Plastic. Justin also has years of experience in the startup industry and is a fountain of knowledge for his fellow founders. So I really hope you listen to the episode and enjoy everything he has to share and then go check out junk Theory. Hello and welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Grace, the startup CPG editor, and I am here with Justin Wolf, the founder of Junk Theory. So Justin, I will let you introduce yourself and junk theory to our listeners.

01:42
Justin Wolff
Yeah, thanks race. It's awesome to be here. I'm a huge fan of the startup CPG community and it's a real honor to be chatting with you guys today and introducing junk theory brand. So yeah, I'm the CEO and co founder of Junk Theory along with my co founder and partner Alison Mabbitt. Ali and I work together and we have been in the social enterprise space for about a dozen years. The last company that I founded is a brand called Ubi. UB is a kind of like the Tom shoes of school supplies. So that is a brand where we make really fun, colorful and engaging school supplies. For every item that we sell, we donate one to kids in need across the United States.

02:17
Justin Wolff
Brand that's now given more than 7 million kids across the US free sets of school supplies and currently serving about 2000 kids a day with free sets of school supplies. So for me, doing business by engaging for good is really the only way to go. And it's so much fun and it's so much more meaningful, both personally and as the team. So I just love it. It's also where I got to meet Allie, originally she was the head of cause marketing, did such a good job, she ended up ultimately running marketing at Ubi. But my co founders at UBI had also launched a beauty incubator where they were basically building out beauty brands for celebrities. And everything was kind of done under one roof.

02:54
Justin Wolff
And that's where I got really for the first time, let's call it a peek behind the curtain to see how the beauty sausage was made. And I realized, you know, I had never been in the beauty category before, but I had been in the social enterprise space. And what I saw at the time was the sort of meteoric rise of what we'll call clean beauty. I almost feel like putting air quotes around the word clean because it was such a difficult term to really define. I think even today, it's hard to really say. You know, if you were to ask someone, what is clean beauty? You'll get probably ten different answers. But what I felt at the time was clean beauty. Really, the conversation revolved around formula, sort of. The conversation ended with formulas.

03:32
Justin Wolff
So clean beauty is all about creating formulas that are good for people and planet, which I think is great. But, you know, what happens when those formulas are placed in plastic single use chars, which 95% of them are across the category. You know, the more I started looking into this, the less palatable that kind of became as a concept, because I felt like the kind of people that are looking for clean, sustainable, healthy formulas probably are also very passionate about sustainability. Right. And feel very strongly about the idea that, you know, I'm going to go ahead and buy a product that I'm going to use for two months that almost inevitably is going to be sitting on the planet for the next 500 plus years.

04:10
Justin Wolff
And I just got together with Allie, and we had done so much work around impact with ub and stuff, and we started looking at this beauty category and started to say to ourselves, asked ourselves a really basic question, would it be possible to create a brand where nothing went in the trash? Is it possible to rethink what it means to be a clean beauty brand? And instead of ending the conversation with formula, we really begin it with formula, right? So, yes, every formula should be healthy, you know, ingredients for people on planet. But what a crazy concept would it be for a brand to go out there and say, we care as much about where things end up as we do about selling stuff? What a novel concept, right?

04:46
Justin Wolff
And so that was the genesis of junk theory, was this idea that clean beauty brand should not just be about formula, but packaging as well. And that led us on an incredible journey to the kind of discover and figure out what could we do to really change the game, not create something that's just like incrementally better. Right? We just don't have time for that. The world, the environment does not have time for incremental change. What we need is something that is impossible to ignore. And so that took us down a journey that took a few years. It was a crazy time. Covid supply chains getting shut down, impossible to have face to face meetings and things like that.

05:21
Justin Wolff
But ultimately, where we landed was developing the first skincare line to be entirely packaged in metal or aluminum, the most recycled and recyclable material on earth, infinitely recyclable. And something that you can do that is curbside recyclable, right? So we're not asking the consumer to change any behavior, send something back, go take something into a store, things that they are more likely and they're not probably unlikely to do. What we wanted to do is make it as simple as humanly possible and just make something that was curbside recyclable. So that led us to what the present vision is of the brand and the iteration of it, which is creating really best in class formulas, packaging that has ever hit the category.

06:01
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, I love that. And just going back to what you said about clean beauty being such a nebulous term, I feel like it's become such a marketing ploy in a way. And I'm curious, how do you guys try to cut through some of that noise of this clean beauty space to communicate like, no, this is actually as clean as we're saying it is, or there are so many brands out there being like, clean, natural, eco, all these buzzwords, how do you cut through that?

06:31
Justin Wolff
I think that's a great question. I think we do pose thought provoking questions, you know, in our social media and even in our packaging. I think it's just kind of really elevating the idea and giving people the basic set of knowledge. For example, a lot of people don't realize how much plastic is actually recycled in the US or not. So we start to bring awareness around that, right? So, for example, most people, I think, don't really understand that only about 5% of what you put in that blue bin is ever going to get recycled, right? Most plastic does not get recycled. There's just simply not the infrastructure in the US for that, right? And people have no idea about how many plastic things are produced just in this category alone.

07:11
Justin Wolff
Like last year alone, the beauty category produced over 100 billion pieces of plastic packaging just last year. Like, that's as many stars as there are in the Milky Way galaxy. Okay, so this is a category I think we really need to rethink how we do things, and we just need to be honest. So, for example, one of the things that we really try and push away from is this idea of brainwashing, right. Or saying that you're better than you are. Right? So while we do package our things in metal, right. We don't say that we are 100% plastic free, because, for example, in our metal bottle over here, there is a small liner that sits on the top that keeps it kind of airtight. Right. And that's got a little bit of plastic in it. Right. And so we're honest with people about it.

07:52
Justin Wolff
We just hope that people will align with our brand through our kind of radical honesty, if you will, and also just kind of taking on that role of sort of educating people about what the reality is out there, which I think is really important. So, for example, we ask some basic questions or say some basic facts. This is our starter kit over here. And around our starter kit, we pose like kind of facts or interesting things like skincare we use for two months should not pollute the planet for 500 years. And plastic takes more than 500 years to decompose. It will literally outlast your great, great grandkid. Just funny kind of willow thing to try and bring a little levity into it as well, while exposing people to some facts that they may not know. What we don't really do is shame other brands.

08:37
Justin Wolff
We don't shame people for any current behaviors or anything like that. That's not what we're about. We're just about kind of introducing new ways of doing things, make it really easy for the consumer to kind of make that switch and celebrate those kind of wins. I think another area that's very interesting that we're starting to see now is changes at the retail section, right. Because this is not just about what can a brand do or what can a consumer do. We really need to start to ask, what is the role and responsibility of the brand? What part can the consumer play? And then what part or role can a retailer play, right? So as we're starting to see things like Credo and Sephora and Ulta start to elevate their clean beauty standards, right.

09:13
Justin Wolff
And say, you got a credo now that says a couple of years from now, any brand that has over 50% virgin plastic in their packaging is just not going to sit in our stores anymore. You know, that's a great step in the right direction. I'm glad to see that what we're doing is already ahead of where they want to be five years from now. But I think when you start to see the sort of efforts that are happening in the right direction, both from the consumer side, from the brand side, from the retailer side, I think that's going to start to overcome some of the greenwashing that is out there. But there's still a hell of a lot of it.

09:43
Justin Wolff
And I think it's really going to come down to putting out content that is approachable, hopefully some humor in it, and is relatable, but is really informative as well.

09:52
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And I know as a beauty consumer myself, I really appreciate that honesty and also just taking the guesswork out because as you said, it's so confusing on the market. There's so many options, there's so many different ways you try to be an ethical consumer. But if you don't really know what a brand has in it or what they stand for, or you're just kind of guessing on your own, you're just confused and overwhelmed and you go with what you know instead of going with a newer product that might push you towards a more sustainable venture. But obviously, you started this with this idea to be largely plastic free. But going back to your formulas themselves and your products themselves, I'd love to hear about how you decided what is in that junk theory starter kit.

10:40
Grace Kennedy
Also the development process, which I know is quite long and arduous. But yeah, how did you decide the three products that you're in your starter kit? And by the way, I do love your, I think it's called the night cream. That one. I'm like, I wish up and my skin feels like a baby. But anyway, I'd love to hear how you guys chose those three products and then how you developed them.

10:59
Justin Wolff
I love how you mentioned earlier also about like kind of the guesswork that has to happen and the, what we talk about in John theory is no more guesswork and no more guilt in your daily routine. Right. You shouldn't have to be a pharmacist to figure out whether the ingredients in these formulas are good and healthy for you. And you shouldn't have to feel guilty about getting this stuff that you really need. You know, you need skin care. We want to take care of our skin, our face and all of that, but we shouldn't have to feel guilty about that because we're taking care of our skin. It's coming at the cost of 500 years of plastic sitting on the planet. Multiply that by the number of products you use.

11:30
Justin Wolff
So to get back to the kind of formulas and how we chose them and all of that, I also want to add one other thing that I think is really important. This is probably the most important thing that I think I learned in my time at UB as chief giving officer over there, where all I wanted to do was talk about impact and our giving program and everything. The most important lesson that I learned, and I think this really applies to junk theory and this was in the back of my head as were developing our formula, is that unless you win on product, like your product is better than whatever sits to the left or the right of it on the shelf, there is no impact story. They have to choose your product in order to create that impact, right?

12:04
Justin Wolff
So you want to create great impact, create great products, right? And so that was our philosophy going into developing our formulas. We were like, we are absolutely not going to white label something which is probably the most common practice, a startup skincare brand that is not white labeling. But we decided not to do that.

12:22
Grace Kennedy
For the dairy, for the people who, sorry to interrupt you, but I just learned what white labeling is from another beauty founder. So can you, for the people who aren't in the industry don't know what white labeling is, can you just explain what that is to listeners?

12:34
Justin Wolff
So white labeling, essentially what you'll do is as you're going to develop a formula or you're going to manufacture a formula, what you'll do is you'll go to either a formulator or a contract manufacturer and oftentimes they will created their own formulas that they'll then say, okay, here's your moisturizer. It's already made for you here. Now, if you want to just kind of customize it and sprinkle in a few ingredients and poof, you have your formula, it'll save you a ton of time and money and all that. It's. Right. It does. It saves a ton of time and money. However, you know, your Formula Z pretty much the exact same thing as the other three brands that just launched last week and whatnot, right? We wanted to be very prescriptive about our formulas, right?

13:12
Justin Wolff
So one, went to what I would say is arguably the best green formulator, right? So understands what it's like to formulate clean and healthy products that are good for people and planet responsible decisions around sourcing of ingredients. All of that they were very good at. It's the same guys that do you know, Bocia and Goop and some other really great skincare brands out there. Then in terms of formulas, like how did we come about choosing our formulas? It's a pretty simple philosophy. And I think this is one of my favorite things about junk theory, is that what we don't want to end up doing is creating a million different skus and a million different products that ultimately end up competing with themselves that you don't really need. Junk theory is also a reaction to some of this, like K beauty.

13:52
Justin Wolff
You need twelve steps to prep your skin every morning. It kind of makes me laugh because by the time you're on the third step or fourth step, I mean, these formulas aren't even so. You have so many layers on your skin, it's not even touching your skin anymore. One, what were really excited about doing was basics better, right? So creating the kind of essential formulas that you are going to use every single day, right? Because that's how we can start to eliminate your plastic footprint, is by getting you to switch the kind of basic formulas that you are using every single day to jump theory and start to eliminate your plastic footprint. And I think you'll see, as we begin to expand our skew count and grow, it will fit with that model.

14:30
Justin Wolff
So the three of the most common skincare products that people use every day is a daily cleanser, a daily moisturizer, and an overnight treatment. And so we're like, okay, we're going to start with these three, and let's win trust with these products. I think what you'll see is we'll probably like to do maybe two, maybe three more products for the face, but that'll be it. You know, let's get an SPF product for the face. Let's get a serum and maybe like an eye cream. But that's it. Like kind of everything else, it starts to get a little esoteric when we start to get into that kind of jump space. Like, do you really need that?

15:05
Justin Wolff
And I think once we win trust on the face, what could be very interesting is to see how we can expand to other products that might fit outside of the skincare category. So start to dive a little bit into personal care. So can we start to work on, you know, okay, well, we've got the five or six products that you use the most every single day for your face. Now let's start to look at what are those other culprits in the bathroom, you know, soaps, conditioner, shampoo, body moisturizer, things like that and create that, essentially that basic suite of products that you use the most all the time. And let's eliminate that plastic footprint while also eliminating any concerns about, hey, is this okay, what I'm putting on my skin? Is this healthy for me? Is it good for sensitive skin? Is it natural?

15:45
Justin Wolff
Is it organic? We do all of that. So no more guilt, no more guesswork. That's all about jump free living. That's what the brand.

15:53
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, I love that. And I completely agree in that not only are there so many brands, there are so many different people telling you what to put on your face and all these different 18 steps. And what I found, at least in my own routine, is when it's simple, I do it. If it's too complicated, I just don't do it and I get lazy. And that's just my reality. But I appreciate the brands that are offering these, like, simple choices where you can just say, here's one, two, three, I'm done, and I don't have to think about it anymore. But speaking to that point you're making of winning trust with customers and growing junk theory in the coming years, how has it been getting junk theory into people's hands as you've launched, as you've grown, how have you found the customers for junk theory?

16:37
Grace Kennedy
Has it been online? Has it been in person retail? What's been your approach to getting to customers?

16:43
Justin Wolff
Yeah, that's a really good question. That has been a very challenging thing as a startup brand. I won't paint a rosy picture that, oh, it's so easy. And here's what we did. And this is the magic thing. It's really hard because you are working on extraordinarily limited budgets. Right. So by the time we got to launch, it was so difficult to navigate our way through. Covid, how much longer it took us to get to launch that went through, like a ton of the money that we raised to the point where it was like a pretty small kit by the time we launched. Right. But were absolutely determined to get this brand out there. So I think we have pretty much launched this brand more or less organically. Right. Which I kind of like it.

17:23
Justin Wolff
It's sort of a source of pride in the sense that I can say we've done tens of thousands in sales, we had hundreds and hundreds of customers and all of that without spending a penny on paid ads. So zero on paid ads. What we have done is we've engaged some pr. So we've been mentioned in pretty much every major beauty publication we've been winning awards left, right and center for our formulas. And we just won new Beauties 2024 Eco friendly moisturizer of the year. Our cleanser keeps winning. That's been really great and helpful. And what I think has also been helpful is just word of mouth. People are getting out there and something is happening.

17:58
Justin Wolff
Like this is resonating and it's such a unique offering in the category that I think people are starting to kind of talk about it and it is growing somewhat organically, which is really exciting. And I think as we start to look at numbers and we get data since we've launched, which was over half a year ago now, at this point, what we're starting to see is some pretty exciting numbers coming back. Like, we are more than double the industry average for repeat purchasing at this point. So almost 40% of customers are buying again. And that is without any kind of retail targeting, any kind of paid ads whatsoever. So I think it's really exciting.

18:33
Justin Wolff
Other thing that's been really neat as well is that I think anytime that people are talking about our brand or you have outside folks kind of talking about it, you know, that it's really honest and organic. We have not paid influencers to talk about our brand or I just think there's something. I get the whole influencer model, and I don't know if my co founder will kill me for saying this, but I get the influencer model. I get how these folks are paid. Right. But from a consumer perspective, I just think there's like, I almost want to put out an ad. That's an ad that says if you have to pay someone to pretend that they like your brand, there's something wrong with that. Right. It's like, I just want to do things really honestly and be transparent.

19:14
Justin Wolff
That's another thing as well that we do, which I don't understand why other brands are not doing this. But, like, beauty is one of these opaque categories where you don't have to disclose all your ingredients, especially ingredients that are below like 1%. You don't have to say a thing about them, that they're even in there. Right. And that's crazy to me. So another thing we pride ourselves with, the junk theory, is that we have a hundred percent ingredient transparency, right? Because if you have nothing to hide, then you show it all. I mean, our ingredients are incredible, so why not let everyone know about them?

19:42
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And what you're saying in this organic growth also comes back to that point you made about if the product is good. And it will grow without all these like, bells and whistles. I mean, hopefully. But you have to have a good product in order for people to want to spread word of mouth. You have to have that product actually be good. And something else you said that I wanted to come back to because we actually are launching today, as I record this, but when this comes out, it'll have been launched for a few weeks, but we're launching a PR service for brands in the startup CPG community to post their press releases through our website. And something that I think a lot of brands, small brands, have questions about, or at least that I've encountered, is like, what good is PR for?

20:25
Grace Kennedy
And how does PR help a small brand when you don't have, like, the money to pay for all these things? So I'm curious to hear how you engaged with PR to get these placements and how that sort of helped. I mean, obviously I know how it helped your brand, but how you guys utilize PR when you were still so new.

20:48
Justin Wolff
So I think one of the key roles that PR has played is giving the brand some legitimacy, right? So it's one thing for us to say, hey, we're junk theory, and you should really love our brand and everything. It's another thing to have kind of industry leading publications start to talk about your brand. And I think that is pretty important. You want to be able to have that as seen on or awards and accolades and five stars and things like that to really kind of legitimize your brand in front of others that have never heard of your brand before, especially as a new brand and especially when you don't have like, kind of celebrity driving the brand. Right. I feel like every other week we're just seeing another skincare brand, some celebrity.

21:28
Justin Wolff
I'm like, you know, what does this celebrity have or know about science of skincare and things like that? It's just like, it's a selling tactic. Can we just do away with that, all that junk, as we like to say, and just make a better product with values that align with a customer? Is that the hardest thing in the world to do? I hope not. So I think PR plays that kind of role. PR can also be very helpful. For example, if you want to start to seed product out to dermatologists, they were very helpful in getting our products out to derms all over the place. Every so often it can be nice to have our brand featured on tv shows, daytime tv, where they get excited about it and we gift it to all the audience.

22:09
Justin Wolff
These are great ways of starting to get the brand out there where you are not just dropping extraordinary amounts of money trying to figure out your customer acquisition cost on me.

22:20
Grace Kennedy
And I think, right, and the paid ads are so hard and so expensive to really even know. Are they working? And there's so many questions about that. And did you guys work with a PR agency to get some of these placements?

22:33
Justin Wolff
Yeah, so we've been working since our launch with Trachtenberg and company. I think they're one of the best agencies out there. New York based, represent a large number of beauty brands, healthy brands, and wellness brands and the like. So can't say enough good things about them.

22:46
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, that's awesome. And I think it's a great point of just getting that legitimacy from external sources. And has that helped? And then also, how have you been working to do this? But has that helped that legitimacy? Has it helped you get into retail locations? Are you guys aiming to get into retail? What's your strategy around getting in person locations? Like a credo, which, you know, maybe down the line or maybe you're already there and I don't know, but, yeah. How have you guys been approaching the retail strategy?

23:14
Justin Wolff
Yeah, so it's. It was not part of our launch strategy because I think retail is an interesting. I think it actually is a really important part of an overall strategy to diversify risk a little bit. You don't really want to be mono channel d to see only. I think that's. You put a lot of risk on a brand. I think omnichannel is a much smarter approach, but you need to run before or sort of walk before you run. So to say, it's funny because from my experience in my last company, UB, which is in, you know, pretty much every major retailer, we launched the brand and target stores nationwide and expanded into most other major retailers. So that's actually where my relationships are the strongest. But I felt that's not the right kind of move for a brand, like jump theory.

23:55
Justin Wolff
What I would like to see is Allie and I always talked about it as we're building a movement as much as we are building a brand. So can we do this in a grassroots way or build it from, like, kind of the ground up? Right. Let's create demand. Right? Like, following for the brand through direct to consumer relationships. Every time we send out one of these, like, starter kits, I write a personal note on it. That's a different kind of relationship that you can have with the consumer, where I can show them how much I appreciate what they're doing and being part of this mission and vision for the brand.

24:24
Justin Wolff
And I think once you created sort of that demand dynamic and there's a following and you're showing sort of these KPI's in the direct to consumer space, then it's a very different conversation you can have with a retailer. Right. And I think in terms of a resale strategy, what probably makes the most sense is starting with something that you can handle initially. Right. So who are the retailers out there that share your values? Right. That you can not just enter but succeed in them. Right. It's so great to get some huge retailer to take your product on. Right. But it's also one of the most dangerous things a brand can do because typically what you'll see with retail relationships is that they don't maintain inventory risk. Right. So they will place your products in the stores. Right.

25:09
Justin Wolff
But then you also have to back it with all kinds of marketing and merchandising and maybe putting salespeople in the stores and all this kind of spend, spend. Right. But if your products don't sell through, you need to buy them back from the retailer. Right. Which if you understand how important cash flow is and cash positions are for young brands, that can be an existential threat. So what we would like to do is kind of keep developing and building that direct to consumer, that demand out there. Okay. Is our basic business model resonating? Do people really vibe with this idea of a brand that cares not just about formula but packaging as well?

25:45
Justin Wolff
And then once that demand is in place, then I can go up to a credo, for example, that I think really shares our values and say, let's talk about replacement over here and how much good in terms of what credo is trying to do around sustainability and packaging. A brand like junk theory can be in terms of elevating your retail brand as well from a sustainability perspective. And I think that'll be a really exciting conversation to have. Most likely what we'll want to do is develop maybe one or two more skus and we are working on a sort of next generation packaging system. When we have that a little bit more developed, I think it's going to be very exciting to roll that out in a retail setting.

26:24
Grace Kennedy
Yeah. And I know packaging is such a beast on its own, so I'm sure that takes lots of time. But what is your vision for this new packaging? Or can you tell us about it?

26:35
Justin Wolff
Yeah, let's just say it is kind of like a more elevated, more beautiful, more designed metal system with a refill aspect to it. So think of a very beautiful, sort of permanent jar that you would have with something akin to a refill pond type of system in it.

26:55
Grace Kennedy
I love that. Yeah. And I think refillable products are something people are definitely eager for. And I know myself would love when there's a refill option, when there's something I buy every month or every few months. I love when I don't have to get a whole new jar and I can just refill the jar I already have. So that's very exciting. I know that all those things, though, take time.

27:16
Justin Wolff
A lot of time and a lot of resources. So we are just exploring that right now and trying to figure out what it would take to make that a 2025 play for the brand.

27:25
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And speaking of resources, I know you mentioned early on that you had done a raise before launching junk theory, but since then, have you guys been doing any fundraising efforts or have you still been sort of just going off that initial raise?

27:40
Justin Wolff
Yeah. So we are currently doing a small bridge round to support, for example, the new packaging development, to have a little bit more in the kitty for marketing purposes, and also to develop those two new formulas that we talked about right now. So it's still. The brand is still at a point where too small for institutional money. You know, I've been down that road, and I think you really need to have a certain amount of revenue in per year before that really makes sense from a time perspective. So we're still kind of hoarding and engaging with angels primarily. Mostly, you know, that either have experience in the beauty space or that are pretty passionate about sustainability. And, you know, our cap tables got some pretty incredible folks in it, both, like I said, from the beauty space and from retail and from sustainability stuff.

28:28
Justin Wolff
So folks like Josh Resnick from Sugarfina and Spencer Raskoff from Zillow, Julia Jackson, founder of Grounded and Jackson family Winery. Some really great folks there.

28:39
Grace Kennedy
That's awesome and very exciting. And if any angel investors are listening to this, reach out to Justin and invest in junk theory. So sort of thinking a little bit more broadly now, getting out of the nitty gritty, if you will, what has been one of the biggest challenges founding this beauty brand? And how have you worked through it? Or how are you still through it?

29:02
Justin Wolff
Nothing was easy. Nothing was easy about this. I think that. I'm not sure if this is specific to the timing. Basically, at the end of 2019, early 2020, Ally and I took a trip to Jakarta to document the impact and the effect of plastic waste and the legacy of that. So were literally walking on floating islands of plastic off of the coast of Jakarta. It's the kind of thing you just can't unsee. And that's what made us say, all right, we're going to do this. You know, we'll give up our cushy salaries and jobs, and let's go into the startup world again. But two weeks later, I think February, March 1, week of March, the entire world shut down. When were in Jakarta, were hearing about some kind of virus or something that was in China. I was like, now, whatever, you know?

29:45
Justin Wolff
And two weeks later, the entire world shut down, which had a huge impact on supply chain, import, export, anything. My ability to be able to just go out and meet people and do face to face meetings when you're raising money, that's kind of really important. And likewise, were developing these formulas. It was like, here, I want to let you try it and have a look at it. So all that became really hard. But I think probably two things were very difficult. One is supply chain stuff, right?

30:12
Justin Wolff
So figuring out how we're going to do the packaging, we did material analysis on everything from, we had originally started with ocean waste plastic, and were like, hey, we're going to pull plastic out of the ocean, make jars out of it, and then when we're done, have people send it back, and we'll upcycle it into durable goods, park benches, and all of that. But, you know, we ran into an issue with ocean waste plastic, and it realized that this company that were working with was never actually incorporating the ocean waste plastic into the actual packaging. So there was chain of custody issues. So they were telling us that the bottles were made out of ocean waste plastic.

30:45
Justin Wolff
But at the end of the day, they were just kind of pulling plastic out and handing it off to some municipal recycling, which basically meant they were burning it, you know, and I was like, I'm not starting a company, you know, saying that we're ocean waste plastic when it's not. And that's when I began to learn how much greenwashing there was about ocean waste plastic. There's ocean bound, fine, it's on its way into the ocean. That's more usable. But if something's been sitting in the ocean for years, it's been so degraded, it's almost impossible to use in packaging. So that's something people should look out for. But that was part of the learning. Then went to another company that was building this very innovative system that ended up being impossible to seal. After a year of kind of working with them.

31:23
Justin Wolff
And then were experimenting with things like wood composts and organic material compost or composites, I should say. They were supposed to be compostable, but at the end of the day, they're only industrially compostable. And there's no industrial composting infrastructure in the US. It's not like you can just put it in your backyard compost and six months from now it's going to be dissolved. So it just took a very long time to get to the point where, okay, finally we've got packaging that we can use. We've tested it, stability, compatibility, testing, all of that. And it's actually good to go and ready to go. I would say that was by far the most expensive, most time consuming, and most challenging aspect of the brand. And the other thing is marketing.

32:04
Justin Wolff
And I would say to anyone thinking about starting a beauty brand, it takes a lot of money to market this stuff, and it's going to be very, very expensive. And if you don't have those resources, then you need to be such a hustler and you really need to, like, I mean, for Allie and I, when we launched this thing, it was us picking up the phone and calling every single human that we knew out there to come and support this brand and what were doing with the brand. But that got the ball rolling. But you need to be very careful about how you're going to spend, especially in the digital environment, very quickly. Try and get to understand what your real customer acquisition cost is going to be. You know, what customer acquisition costs is and how that works.

32:41
Justin Wolff
But then also weighing that against what the lifetime value of someone is going to be. So maybe that customer acquisition cost is going to be higher than what they're going to spend the first time, but if they buy the second time, then it's made sense. So what percentage of your people are buying the second time? And kind of figuring out that whole digital environment for scaling and growing the brand can sometimes cost a lot to kind of figure that out. But it's really important to do, right?

33:03
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And that's great advice. And actually, my last question was going to be, and I asked this of almost any founder, which is, if you were talking to someone who was in your shoes back in 2019 and they were about to start a beauty brand, what advice would you give them pre launch?

33:22
Justin Wolff
Make sure the company is capitalized. Well, you have enough to actually do something differentiate that is going to be really important because in today's world, there's just like so many brands, so many choices. I think the brands that are going to succeed are going to do things, like I said, kind of in the beginning, right? Not something that's like incrementally better, but something that's impossible to ignore. There is the celebrity model. I get that. Okay. If you've got some big celebrity in your back pocket and you want to launch it with them, all right, I understand that. But I also think that's inherent with risk as well. One DUI, one mistake, one thing that celebrity does that's off putting or they get canceled. Your brand just got canceled.

33:59
Justin Wolff
And also you have to think how much value alignment are you really going to create just based on celebrity alone? Another interesting thing, which I think I may have done differently, looking back on it now, is I really felt at the beginning that I needed to leave my last job at UB when I was starting junk theory, because I was like, okay, if I'm going to be raising money from investors, they need to see that I'm 100% all in on this brand and I'm going for it. I actually think that's not a smart move anymore as you are building the brand. Right. And trying to kind of figure out what is the brand identity, what is going to be like, let's create some formulas and things like that.

34:35
Justin Wolff
That is stuff that you can kind of do on top of something that you're doing right now. Right. So one thing that you should really guard against, if you can, is as you're raising money in the beginning or whatever resources you have. The biggest, like outlay in terms of resources generally is salaries. Right. You need to be really careful around that. So if there is any way that you and whatever co founder you have can avoid drawing a salary too early or before you are driving revenues, do it. Figure out a way to not draw. You don't want to like, martyr yourself. You got to be really careful and think about your own dynamics. Do you have a mortgage? Do you have kids that you need to take care of? How are you going to cover for that?

35:15
Justin Wolff
Anything that you imagine time wise, like two x that it's like contracting. It's like when you're redoing a kitchen in a house or something, like whatever the contractor says, just double it. Okay. To be more realistic. So I would say just be super careful about how you go about spending money in the beginning when you raise six figures in my bank account. Okay, we can start to move on these things. I would be super careful even at that point because once you launch and you are going to go down that marketing route. Paid and performance marketing, it's going to go really quickly. The other thing I would say is think about any channel in any medium and any way that you can get the word out about your brand that does not involve traditional paid spend on meta properties. How creative can you be?

35:59
Justin Wolff
What partnerships are out there that you can create? Right. I think partnerships are a huge thing. Right? What are the other brands out there that are value aligned that can help me get my message out because they've got bigger following than I do. But we both elevate each other's brands and missions. That's great. Same thing from a social enterprise perspective, who are the right partners that you want to engage? Right. So we as a brand that wants to end the plastic era and beauty, right. There's like repurposed global that's moving plastic from the world and there's five gyres that's cleaning up plastic from our oceans and the ocean cleanup and all these really cool kind of nonprofit partners that we can then go ahead and align with that not only have legitimacy to our brand, but can help. Their audiences are our audience.

36:44
Justin Wolff
You know, our audience is their audience. How do we co elevate and bring things up in a less traditional way than just putting ads in front of people?

36:53
Grace Kennedy
Absolutely. I think that's all really valuable advice and I hope everyone had their pen and pencil out. This was so much fun to talk to you, Justin. And you know that I am a fan of your products and a fan of junk theory's mission. But where can people who are not familiar with junk theory learn more about your brand and your product?

37:10
Justin Wolff
Yeah, just go to junktheory.com dot. We have some great articles as well about sustainability there. Theres an about section, theres a whole sustainability section. But I would really encourage people to give it a shot. I think that the kind of ingredients that we have in our formulas, I will put them against any brand in the luxury category that costs twice as much as ours. I think were at a premium price category and put our brand against any other brand at our price point. I think we win every single time. Give it a shot. See what you think. Again, it's one of these things where even if our formulas are packaged in the worst kind of single use plastic, they would still better than whatever's kind of out there.

37:47
Justin Wolff
But here's an opportunity to get some incredible super clean formulas in the most responsible packaging the categories ever seen. So welcome to it. And you can check us out on Instagram as well. That's our social channel, junktheory.

38:01
Grace Kennedy
Love it. Well, yeah, this was so much fun. And I hope everybody goes to junktheory.com or goes to your instagram and gives you guys a follow. Or reach out to Justin on Slack if you have questions about his brand or about beauty. He's obviously a wealth of knowledge. But yeah, this was so much fun. Thank you for joining me, Justin. And thank you everyone for listening. All right, everyone, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode of the podcast, it would help us out so much if you left a five star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I am Grace Kennedy, the editor for startup CPG, so feel free to add me on LinkedIn or reach out to me on Slack.

38:43
Grace Kennedy
I'm always on the hunt for new and exciting brands to feature, and if you're a potential sponsor that would like to appear on the podcast, please email partnershipsartupcpg.com. And finally, as a reminder for anyone listening, if you haven't already, we would love for you to join our community on Slack and you can sign up via our website, startupcpg.com. Dot.