The Future of DYPERing: Innovation, Technology, and CX with Alexandra Vailas
Tune in to the latest episode of "The Juice with Jess Cervellon" as she welcomes Alexandra Vailas, the Senior Vice President of Brand Marketing at Dyper, a brand with a mission of sustainability and transparency. Get ready for an insightful conversation on maintaining consistent branding across diverse retail outlets, balancing a mission with consumer needs, and the journey from influencer to brand marketer.
(upbeat music)
- My name is Jess Servion,
and I'm super excited to bring you my new podcast,
The Juice With Jess.
This podcast is gonna be about everything
in your customer's journey.
We're talking acquisition, awareness,
making that purchase, retaining that customer,
bringing them back around, and everything in between.
This is gonna be all about delivering dope brand experiences
and talking to some really amazing people
who are in the customer experience space,
marketing space, and everything in between.
(upbeat music)
- Welcome back to another episode of The Juice With Me, Jess.
This week, I am still in Scottsdale, Arizona,
and I am interviewing Alex Vales,
SVP of brand marketing at Diaper.
Alex, I could sit here and I can talk about your brand,
but I actually really would love for you
to talk about your brand story.
- Yeah, so I work for Diaper,
and guess what, we sell Diaper.
- Diaper!
- But with a Y.
- What with a Y.
- So Diaper is all about the diapering journey
that is the closest to zero.
We really care about protecting baby and the planet.
And the unique thing about Diaper,
other than that it's a really great diaper
and great product, is that we prioritize
independent testing, transparency, and environmental standards
the best that we possibly can so much so that
we can keep diapers out of landfills
and turn them into dirt.
We're really, from start to finish,
a better diapering option.
- Yeah, that's amazing.
'Cause I do feel like in the generations
that we've grown up in, right?
Like there's so many bad products out there,
especially like in the diaper area for babies,
like we just grow up with like all these like
really crappy products.
So it's a really amazing mission,
like to start out with like sustainability
at such a young age.
- Yeah, I mean we want to create environmental advocates
with this generation, the alpha generation.
It's crazy to think about that.
- Yeah, I know.
But you know, I think that a lot of times
people think that just pose ability
and sustainability can't go hand in hand.
We like to think of ourselves
not just as a challenger brand in the diapering category
that's been dominated by, you know, big CPG for decades,
but that we are a challenger brand
really challenging the status quo of saying,
why can't it be sustainable?
How do we find a way?
Cloth diapering isn't really, I mean, it's amazing,
but very few people can actually do that.
- Yeah, I think a lot of new parents have,
and listen, I'm not a parent so I don't,
like I can't have a very valid opinion about this,
but what I have seen with a lot of my friends
who care about sustainability and disposability
and all of these things, you start off
with that full intention of wanting
to be able to do cloth diapers,
but then it becomes really hard because when you're
a new parent, like you have a new warm baby.
- You're exhausted.
- You're tired.
- Yeah.
- You, like, everybody has full intentions,
but like nobody really thinks about the consumer
and what stage they're actually in.
- In that journey, you know?
- We convenience is paramount,
convenience has to be there for the parent,
they're so tired, and so how do you offer a diaper
that you don't even really want to pay for?
Let's be honest, like we don't want to pay for diapers
and toilet paper and they're expensive,
and it smells bad and you don't even like diapering,
so how can we as a brand make this as easy as possible,
as accessible as possible, all without the guilt
that comes with disposable diapers?
- Right, right.
Yeah, again, I think it's really amazing.
I think there's gonna be a lot of evolution
in these products, like we already see it so much, right?
I think it's because our generation is having babies,
you know, and we think about these things
and then just imagine even when Gen Z has babies,
you know, like, my hope is that it continues down a path
of just like better for you products,
like that you're, you know, putting it in your home, right?
Like there's so many plastics and like bad things out there,
it's like we don't need to start out a baby's life
with something really crappy.
- No, it's all-- - No pun intended.
- There's so many puns in the diaper.
- No. - It's really fun.
Yeah, no, I think that that's where already,
Gen Z is already in our audience demo,
and we are seeing that environmental standards are,
that's table stakes, it's not even like a category
defining challenge or brand thing.
Now, most of the diaper brands have some type
of environmental message to them,
but we are the only ones addressing the end of life,
and that's the issue that yeah,
there are a lot of great products out there with better,
you know, ingredients and responsible sourcing,
which is fantastic, but what happens after it goes to the landfill?
- Well, it stays there for 500 years.
- Yeah.
- If it has too much plastic,
it stays there for 500 years, it's insane.
So it's now become the third largest contributor
to waste in the world.
- Yeah. - In the world.
- That's insane. - Right?
- That's insane because like as we,
yeah, it makes sense though,
because as we increase in population,
and you know, the other aspect of it,
and these aren't even all my notes,
like I'm literally just vibing right now,
I'm thinking about this, but like think about it,
like even as you know, more people have babies,
not everybody has the same amount of income
and the accessibility, right?
So it's like, you know, as the population increases
and accessibility kind of like decreases,
like those statistics do make sense to me.
Which actually, that is a question that's like popped up,
is like how is diaper thinking about accessibility
for their consumer?
- Yes, it's very top of mind,
because I mean, I think it's over half the population
struggles to afford diapers.
- Yeah. - It's a lot.
In the US. - Yeah.
- So we entered the market at a premium price point,
because we of course, you know,
when you think about enough plant-based content
to be able to compost the diapers commercially,
and a lot of things that we optimized for
to solve that first problem,
we knew that we were entering the market
for the eco-warrior for a small group of people.
But as we have realized,
especially in partnering with Walmart and entering retail,
you know, that's the Valley Shopper,
and we've had to really look at our supply chain
and our sourcing and work very hard
to bring that price down and make it more accessible.
And I think we have some other things coming out.
I think that that will help solve that problem.
But last year, we launched a diaper card
because before we knew we could offer maybe
a new product line that was more economical.
You know, of course, I think a lot of people
think about maybe different product strategies.
And so that is top of mind,
but it takes a while to do that.
So in the interim, how can we solve this problem
with the product line that we have?
Well, we offered a diaper card
where when you go to Walmart,
once you got approved for the card,
you get, you go to Walmart and you can redeem
three boxes of diapers at Walmart,
which is around three months of diapers for free.
Just upon approval, you don't need to spend any money.
Just upon approval, you can go get free diapers.
That's a lot of diapers for free.
And then as you use the card, the points earn you diapers.
So potentially you don't even need to pay for diapers,
which is awesome.
And then once you're done using diapers
because there's a graduation day,
you can then use those points to divert
to a savings account for the future of your kiddo.
So it's really in line with our mission
to protect baby and their future.
And future is a word that encompasses the planet,
but also just their wellbeing
as far as setting them up for success in life.
So we're super excited about that.
We're glad that Walmart was stoked about it.
And obviously it also sends a lot of foot traffic to retail,
which is great.
- Yeah.
(laughs)
The good journey, right?
- Yeah.
- You wanna keep your retailers happy, right?
- Yeah, right, right.
And that's something where yes,
you can only redeem it there.
- Yeah.
Well, I think that this is an amazing way
to close the loop though, right?
Like, I mean, granted, I know we're talking about sustainability
and like loyalty building here,
but like, I think it's really amazing
that you're not just thinking about it
from like one channel of like, okay, you're in D2C,
like loyalty programs like that,
mostly sit just on like your online channel.
And then you can't really close the loop into like retail.
Like you kind of lose that customer's like data
and that experience.
And I think that that's really,
that's a really amazing but differentiator
of bridging that gap, right?
- You get the data on the consumer.
- You get the data.
- And now we also launched an app.
- Oh, wow, tell me more about the app.
- Yeah, so we launched a diaper app
because we realized we,
most of our users are,
for D2C are using their phone.
- Mm-hmm.
- You know, it's a better, faster experience for your mobile device.
And we are able to obviously utilize push notifications,
get a better understanding of, you know,
what's resonating content-wise with our consumer too,
because we have a thousand days of content
to support parents in their parenting journey,
'cause let's be real, like for some parents,
it's just like, this is like a steep learning curve.
- Yeah.
- So we wanna support our parents and it's free.
Once you become a subscriber,
you get access to a thousand days of content for free
and it's daily advice on your wellness and nutrition
and sleep and potty training and diapering,
all of that to support your parenting journey.
And so, yeah, using this app,
you can also manage your diaper card.
So it's like kinda all in one.
- Yeah.
- We launched that in January of this year.
- That's an amazing customer journey.
I would like wanna dive even further into it.
I would actually like to come back to the beginning,
like of when you're thinking of like the brand strategy
and you're thinking about like your customer data
and the feedback loop that you're getting,
like what were kind of like,
just walk me through the first steps of even thinking,
like I wanna build an app for a diaper company.
Like how did that journey internally happen?
- So we actually had an app on old app.
I think it might even still be an app store, maybe not.
But the, our founder Sergio,
he had a company prior to diaper
that was all around prenatal care and it was through an app.
And so the foundation of it was before diaper existed.
And so when he realized he wanted to get in the business
of diapers as he was wheeling dirty diapers
out to the curb, he thought,
wait a second, there's something more here.
So he adapted the previous company's app to diaper
and started making an easy subscription service
'cause that was still pretty new.
We're six and a half years old.
So the app was mainly around making subscription convenient
and just tracking your delivery and...
- Yeah, like the basis of like subscriptions.
- But now that's kind of like, that's pretty normal.
There's nothing earth shattering about the app.
It doesn't make you wanna download that.
In fact, we're at a place where people don't wanna download
more apps.
- I absolutely agree.
I literally when I was sitting on the plane the other day,
I was like, I have time, I'm gonna delete my app.
- Yeah, it takes a space on your phone.
Like what am I, I use this one time.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
But this is one where you would want to just because
you are, your baby is changing sizes every month.
You're needing to update your subscription
and possibly manage your card,
possibly also be digesting content every day.
And you can put your baby's age in the app.
So it's really tailoring your user experience.
- Wow. - Yes.
- It's truly with the cookies going away.
- Oh, and yes, of course.
- And marketers, yes, of course.
I mean, we don't talk about that too much
but considering we're on a marketing podcast.
- I know.
I mean, it's no, I literally that thought
just even came to my mind.
'Cause like the talk about cookies going away
only just came up like recently, right?
But in like so many brands have to think through
at the stage like, okay, well, if cookies go away,
like how do I capture that first party data?
Like what are the innovative ways
of capturing that data?
And like, and I mean, granted like, yes,
diaper is, you know, a children's company, right?
That's for parents.
It's very like specific demographic
but I think it's very innovative
rather than just being like, okay,
here's your formula or here's your diaper.
And like you scan a QR code.
It's like you're continuing down that user journey
and literally touching them at every single one
of their touch points and you're owning those channels
even with you being in retail and on D2C.
- I think that that, all the credit goes to our CEO.
I mean, that's his background is more in technology.
- Okay.
- So he actually coded the app like he does it.
- I love that.
I love a digitally native e-commerce brand.
- Oh yeah.
He's brilliant, he's a brilliant marketer himself.
So it's to be in marketing with your CEO
who can code things and gets excited about that.
It is pretty awesome.
But I think one of the things we learned a really hard lesson
and I think a lot of brands learned this lesson
when Facebook, when that whole,
what was that a couple years ago now,
almost three years ago now.
- Yeah, almost three years ago.
- We had put a lot of our eggs in the paid social basket
and the meta basket and man that hurt us
when all of a sudden we couldn't, you know,
really understand our audience and their behavior.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right.
I mean, you're absolutely, like,
I mean, forget even like you just having an app, right?
Like now, 'cause obviously that kind of solves for that,
like of understanding your audience.
But like you as like a brand marketer,
what advice would you like walking into it?
Like forget diaper, just walking into that situation.
Like what, if you don't have a digitally native CEO,
you know, like, how do you
solve for those things?
- Man, I think that--
- A lot of us, yeah, I think that's what I know.
I sometimes realize that I have it really good.
(laughs)
- I mean, I'm amazed by, I'm like, dang, that's awesome.
- You know, especially, and especially as the consumer
is demanding a very customized experience, right?
- Yes.
- That's the expectation of our consumer now.
It was a very custom tailored experience.
- Yeah.
- It's the rise of AI at that too, you know?
It's like the rise of AI now is like forcing us,
even if you weren't thinking about personalization,
you better be thinking about personalization
because AI can like help you with it,
but then it's still, even when if you involve AI,
it's not always personalized.
- So I'm going to say something that might make
all of your listeners roll their eyes.
- No, you're good.
Is this safe space?
- It is safe.
- It's a safe space because sometimes I actually think
people will wanna come from you
about the way I talk about marketing.
So we all have our opinions.
I'm gonna be honest with you.
- I think that more than ever having consumer insights
and doing regular surveying of your consumers
is the way to do it.
And I think it's both quality and quant.
I think you need to utilize big platforms
and there's a lot of different tools out there,
but that is something where all of a sudden,
we're switching some of those marketing dollars
to survey more often.
And not just asking, have you purchased diapers
within the past six months, but where did you do it?
- Where did you do it?
Who are you?
- Who are you?
- What are you doing?
What's your lifestyle like, like all of that?
- Asking questions at checkout.
- Yep.
- Asking questions within the app.
Asking as many questions as possible
where you're not annoying your consumer
and they're not opting out.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, that's the only way to do it.
And then you need a really strong analyst on your team
or you need, and you need to take a minute
to pause and digest the data.
And that's what I think the hardest part about being
a challenger brand in a category where you,
you know, really are fighting for share constantly.
And I mean, I guess that's everybody, but, you know,
CBG is no joke.
And is slowing down to speed up,
but we are used to just going, going, going, going, going,
but we've realized we haven't really paused
to understand our consumer
and what their needs are today.
- Right.
- It has, it's changing rapidly.
- Right.
All the time, I think one, it's changing rapidly.
Two, we're also getting a bit lazier
with the evolution of AI.
- That's right.
- I'll be real with you, right?
Hot take central up in here.
(laughing)
- No, I think everyone would agree.
- Yeah.
But I mean, like, we're, you know,
we're in that like that discussion point right now
of like, you're absolutely right.
Like, it is serving your audience.
It is understanding your audience in any touch point.
Like, I don't care if you're, you know,
you have five people on your team
or if you have 70 people on your team,
you have data that's coming into you from your customer.
They are emailing you in.
They are in your marketing funnels.
Like, take the time to like, simply go,
even make a Google form if you need to.
You know, it doesn't have to be the most robust
consumer research strategy.
You can start small and build upon it
and like truly understanding your product market fit,
but also your consumer as you evolve as a company
is so important because your company,
or your company, sorry,
your consumer that you have from day one
with your products on the market to day five
or like year five is going to be different.
Like because of the, like how much
we're our consumers are evolving
and that so many things are at our fingertips, you know?
Like the rise of personalization is like really amazing.
And I think that's like,
that gives you a very great brand experience
and we should be all striving to that personalization.
But the expectations of that personalization
are also rising.
Meaning like, people don't just want to know
your name anymore, like, or you're calling me Alex or Jess, right?
I want you to be personalizing offers to me.
I want to like to keep me being loyal to your company.
- Yeah, I think everything from now
you're starting to see founder stories,
consumers need to know who the founder is,
what they believe, your values need to be communicated
very consistently and frequently.
And yeah, they're comparing constantly
between different retailers, but also different brands
and asking a lot about ingredients.
Our consumers are so smart.
And I think that that's the thing as a marketer.
Sure, we could talk about a lot of different content
marketing strategies and ideas and storytelling
and all that, but it doesn't mean anything
until you really just spend time with your consumer.
And remember that you only exist because they are there.
And I've never been more thankful and appreciative
of people in CX.
I think CX is where it's at.
I mean, as a marketer, it's, yeah, BFF.
- Well, I think, absolutely.
I think the CX team always,
'cause I mean, that's where I've started my career
and then like became predominantly a marketer, right?
And so I always will have a soft spot
for like the service team, the success teams, CX, whichever,
whichever name you wanna call it today, right?
But I think what's really interesting is that
what's shifting is people not just thinking of CX
as just CX and actually thinking about it as a channel
that feedback loops and information,
as well as giving like a brand experience to it.
But I think that that is like a big takeaway, right?
Like I see this time and time again,
I still continuously see brands hiring like,
oh, I need customer service,
but then like they never set up analytics.
They never set up like the feedback loop
of what's actually coming to those channels.
You're only thinking about it from a reactive standpoint,
but you're not thinking about it
about the proactive standpoint.
If I have a customer who's being reactive right now,
let's gather information so that I can be proactive
for the other customer before them.
- Right.
And I think as a marketer, you know,
we're more focused on, you know, what's your,
what's your CAC and what, like thinking through
acquiring the customer and that all of those,
and just getting the customer in the door.
And then feeling, I guess you use the word lazy,
just so confident we have the best product
and like of course they're gonna stay,
you know, they're not gonna switch.
Well, I think now because again,
'cause of accessibility, looking,
our consumers, rising up to things.
I mean, especially in the parenting space,
oh, you use that, it's like a word of mouth
and you know, friends referring you to different products.
It's huge.
- Yeah.
- Retention's everything.
- Everything.
- Everything.
- Yeah.
And that's a lot of marketing right there.
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- I think what's really interesting is that
a lot of times people think of retention as just like,
oh, my upsells or my win backs
or a lot of these other things,
but you don't think about retention as an all encompassing
of your brand experience, your customer experience,
the analytics that go into it,
the segmenting that goes on.
Okay, maybe there's actually, I take it back.
There is definitely segmentation,
but it's not just retention, isn't just about,
okay, how do I close the loop and get them to come back
from a winback email?
It's literally being innovative and thinking about it
from building an app, building a dope subscription program
and really just constantly evolving
what your customer's journey is to loop them back.
- And it's unique to your product or your service
because one of the things that I learned,
I think a lot of people have come into
specifically the diapering space thinking,
oh yeah, I know this, we're just gonna take everything
I know about cool brand marketing
and we're gonna apply it to diapers.
Well, the thing is, is that still 60% of,
over 60% of all diapers are still sold brick and mortar
between Target and Walmart alone.
There's something about the customer behavior
where it is not changing as far as they like
to pick up the box of diapers at the store.
- Yeah, yeah.
So then there's a lot of brand storytelling
and things that you have to do on pack,
like on the actual box itself.
- Absolutely, absolutely.
- I mean, granted, again, you're the expert in the space
but like, and I'm really just giving a viewpoint
from the outside looking into it.
But yes, I do believe that because think about it,
think about that consumer, right?
I'm a dad, I'm a new mom, whatever.
Oh, shoot, I just ran out of diapers.
Like, I gotta go just run to the store
and go get them, right?
But then like the same way you think about yourself
on the shelf, right?
Like in any product, it's not even just diapers.
Like think about deodorant, right?
Deodorant, many choices on the shelf.
So many choices, so many different color schemes.
There's like native that comes,
that's white, then there's degree, that's like green as blue.
- Yeah, minty green.
- Yeah, minty green.
Like, I don't know.
There's Dr. Squaj, like there's this, there's that, you know?
There's so many, you walk into that aisle
and there's so many different choices.
How do you stand out as just a deodorant company, right?
Like, so it's the same type of concept of like,
how do you stand out when you're walking down the diaper aisle
and there's so many different choices
at that point, it does come down to packaging.
It comes down to like, how do you stand out on the shelf?
What I'm interested to know,
because we did a large series of this with festivals
when festivals went through a rebrand.
What, like did you go through any sort of like
consumer research stages with that packaging?
And like, could you talk to us about like,
just the tactics and like what you did there?
- Definitely a lot of research there.
Years of research.
- Yeah, yeah.
Years of research is not just overnight.
- Yes, you know, I think we started,
for background for the listeners,
we started D2C like a lot of brands do
before we entered retail and we were D2C
for three years before we entered retail.
So we thought we knew everything.
We were really proud of ourselves
for the rapid growth that we had
and the fact that we were talking
to the nation's largest retailer.
They were interested us, Walmart, oh my gosh,
we know what's up.
And then we entered Walmart and we realized
we need to rebrand because we had made bamboo diapers
really large and our name small.
And so people thought our name was bamboo diapers.
- Yeah.
- And so there were a lot of mistakes
that we made with our packaging
because it didn't really matter when it's D2C,
they were receiving marketing materials,
they knew our name that way.
But then, yeah.
So we spent a lot of time working with an agency
but also just, you know, internally looking at other people
within the space, our competitors
and trying to figure out what is really
going to make us stand out on shelf.
Everything from the color yellow,
which was already a brand color for us
because it's gender neutral.
We just, it's very bright and happy.
There are a lot of reasons why we chose yellow
but it was great because there wasn't another yellow brand
available in the aisle.
So that was first like a good like lucky win.
But we purposely did not put people on our packaging.
A lot of the other brands have parents and babies
and it's very soft and cushy.
And we decided, you know, that's not our brand voice.
That's our brand voice is very much about science
and research and independent testing
and just being straightforward and transparent.
So we went with more of our story
around responsible diapering and a giraffe.
We have a giraffe named Frankie
but it's just yellow and craft, like a craft round
and black text and we put B Corp front and center
because we feel that that's what our ideal customer care is about.
They know what B Corp is and focus more on ingredients
and putting what was in our diapers
right on the front of the box.
- Yeah.
- That was very different too.
So we did a lot of research of what other brands were doing
and then we took that back and we digested it
as in what are our brand values.
And this is what we're gonna put out there.
Did we know if it was going to truly resonate
and make boxes fly off shelves?
No.
- Yeah.
- But we did and we did do research of like, okay,
where do environmental,
where does the environmental claims sit
among the drivers of purchase?
It is still lower at the, I mean,
price is still number one.
- Right.
- And then efficacy, it has to work.
If it doesn't work, you're not gonna buy it.
- Right.
- Right.
- So in softness matters a lot.
So those are things we realized, oh, okay.
Okay.
So I guess even though we care a lot about the environment,
we still have to address like their main pain points.
- Yes.
- But we're going to talk about the environment
as much as we can.
- Right.
- So that's kind of how we ended up with simply kind diapers
because it communicated, it's simple,
it's kind to the planet and then these are kindness pillars.
And now people know us as the yellow box,
which is great.
- So we're talking a lot about the packaging
and the positioning of particular like words and call outs.
- Yes.
- Which are also really like hammering home
the brand messaging too.
- Right.
- Yeah, so like what you're talking about is also like
the positioning of your brand messaging, right?
And so I know we're talking a lot about retail too,
but like did, we're talking about retail
and we're talking about D2C,
well, we were talking about D2C before,
but what I'm curious is it's like,
did you change any of the sort of like brand positioning
and messaging on D2C as well during this phase?
- Yes.
So when we knew that we were headed towards this direction
to address our packaging failures with the retail,
we realized, no, this is something that we need to make sure
transcends all of our outlets and communication outlets from
and so that because if you're, say that you are someone
that's a subscriber with us, but you put a month on pause
'cause you're traveling and then you go pick up our brand
over at Wom.
I mean, we know that the consumer sometimes picks us up
at different spots or we're on Amazon too.
- Everywhere.
- Yeah, we're omni-channel.
- Yeah, we're omni-channel.
So we needed to make sure that we were driving the,
being as cohesive as possible,
but I will tell you it's incredibly hard.
It's incredibly hard to keep your brand consistent
once you start getting into so many different retailers.
- Absolutely.
- I had no idea.
- Yeah.
- This is my first time on Brandside.
- Yeah, I think, no, and I agree with you.
I think it's like, it's very common for so many different
brands to feel that way too, right?
Because it's exactly what we're talking about.
What resonates in one place might not resonate
in another place.
- Right.
- And you have so many channels, right?
But we sit here and we preach about like,
okay, your consumers journey needs to be consistent.
But then once you get into retail, you can't control it.
I mean, not even just retail, like Amazon too, right?
Like Amazon has its own rules, its own expectations.
And so it's like, you can't control it
in the one funnel that you do have, which is your website.
You can change the messaging all day long
if you wanted to on a PDP.
- That's right, yep.
- But yeah, I agree with you.
I absolutely agree with you.
I think it's really hard to stay consistent
across your entire brand experience.
But when you do, you can continue hammering home,
your values and your mission of your brand.
But I think you have to think about each channel
so differently.
- You do.
And then think about how long it takes
for you to update packaging.
- Oh.
- Yeah.
- So once you go to market with it and it's in stores,
and then you start talking differently on a different channel,
you're risking fragmenting your brand.
- Right.
- But then at the same time you need to maybe
make some changes because you maybe glean
some consumer insights where you know something's gonna work.
It's really hard.
It's like, do we stay beholden to these things
because our packaging says that and we're, you know,
in nationwide and Walmart, or do we start iterating now
over here?
Do we do a clean cut and take all that packaging off
and put new on or do we wait to, do we sell off that?
Like there's so many different ways to go about it.
And there's not necessarily a right and wrong way.
It just is kind of doing like that cost benefit analysis
and just making the choice.
And so a lot of, for most of us at diaper,
this is our first time in the diaper game.
I think there's one person, two people that have worked
with another diaper brand before.
- That's it.
- That's crazy.
- So we're not only figuring it out.
- We're just figuring it out.
- We are figuring it out.
But in some ways it's good to look at things with fresh eyes.
Right?
And to not think, to be successful is to not think
that there's a silver bullet to accept that there is not.
And then to say, well, how are we,
the innovation is really where we've leaned in.
Like we're just gonna be the most innovative diaper company
there is.
That's really like again, coming to our values
and what we're good at and what we wanna do in this space
is we, of course the environment is part of that value
but we launched a charcoal diaper.
- Interesting.
- It's a black, it looks black.
It's the coolest diaper.
It's not colored with any dyes or chemicals.
It's colored with charcoal, which is a natural ingredient.
And you can still compost it into dirt,
which is amazing.
And it looks like a Calvin Klein diaper.
It's so cool.
- I love that.
- Why not?
How can we come up?
- How chic.
- Yeah.
And how can we address this whole demand that consumers have
for something that's cool and fashionable
and has cute prints?
Well, how do we do it in a way that aligns with our values
but offers something new?
Okay, this is what we did.
We did, and we sold it on target.com.
- Yeah.
So just.com?
- Target.com, yep.
I mean, see how we do there, you know?
That's always.
- Yeah, but I think the start.
- But again, yeah.
- It's starting-- - It's rushing into this.
- Absolutely.
- Yeah.
- Absolutely.
Like instead of rushing in and saying, okay,
this is all of my inventory and all of these places, right?
Instead, you're testing out specific channels
to see how it performs.
- Right.
And Amazon, we just actually brought that product line
over to Amazon too.
- Interesting.
- Recently.
- So, and I'm curious if you even know this yet,
between target.com and Amazon.com,
are you seeing any different types of consumer behaviors?
- Not necessarily different consumer behaviors
but it's doing well on Amazon.
- Yeah, so that's a good testing point though.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- I wanna circle back to something
that we haven't mentioned,
but we've been talking about off-camera.
- Okay.
- And we're gonna switch complete gears.
It's not just about diaper.
- Down shifting.
- Down shifting.
Because on this podcast, we also gas people up individually
and I wanna talk about the fact, fun fact about Alex,
she has over a million followers on social
and I think that that's like really awesome
from like a personal brand perspective
and I'd love for you to tell a little bit of that,
that story about you were telling me
about Pinterest and stuff.
- Yes.
Yes, that's a fun fact.
It's a good party story.
- It's a good party story.
(laughs)
- So I have a really unique journey
to getting to the brand side of things.
I started as a creator back in 2010.
So right at the beginning of,
the influencer wasn't even a word like that.
You never heard that.
Definitely never heard creator economy.
None of this jargon.
It was the Wild West and I was blogging.
So I had a WordPress blog
and that was what people did back then.
And Twitter was there and Facebook was there
and Instagram was around.
But Twitter definitely was like the hot one.
- Now X. - Now X.
(laughs)
- Oh, I think that's 14 years later.
So I've always been someone that's quick
to adopt new technologies
and I like beta testing and I just can, a nerd.
And I have styling business, a fashion styling business
here in Arizona and a fashion blog on the side.
So I went to this conference called Altitude Summit
and it was for bloggers.
And I was there just trying to learn
about how to be better at blogging.
And there was a man walking around named Ben Silverman
who's founder of Pinterest.
And this is like everyone's a woman
except for this one person.
So he just took out and he's very shy
and very humble and kind by the way.
And he was trying to get people interested in this app
but there didn't seem to be a lot of appetite.
So he finally is his friend and convinced him
to come to this conference and tell people about it.
And I get this invite to beta test Pinterest.
And as I'm using it, I think, oh my gosh, this is amazing.
I no longer have to carry stacks of magazines
like a virtual bookmarking tool.
And so for me, I saw the application
as a way to streamline my business
and I started making boards for my clients.
And I got an email from Enid
who was the third hire at Pinterest and just said,
"We love what you're doing, Ben likes what you're doing.
On Pinterest, would you be interested
in curating a fall trends board?"
I said, "I was like one of those, like she's all that.
Like, are you talking to me?"
'Cause I am not, I mean, compared to the fashion elite
in New York or LA, Arizona, isn't it?
You're like, I'm just hanging out.
Yeah, I was over here.
Do you think I'm good?
Yeah.
Yeah, so I just was really excited
and of course just jumped at the chance
of offering what I could to this tool I fell in love with.
And I started seeing the ticker go up.
Yeah.
And I remember one day I was looking at it,
I thought, man, it's a lot of people.
It's like 30,000 people.
And then it just kept climbing and climbing in my inbox,
kept getting stuffed with notifications
of people following me.
Wow.
And then eventually it hit a million.
And then I got emails from Revlon and Glamour.
I was hosting parties at the Beverly Hills Hotel
with strangers.
I didn't even know they were flying me out.
Refinery29 called me and said,
"Do you want to host a room with 29 rooms?"
And Coca-Cola was called.
And every brand that I was dreaming of working with
as a fashion stylist that was in Arizona,
all my dreams came true in a minute.
And never once though did I think,
"Oh, I should put my own content out there."
It was so funny.
Yeah.
I didn't think about pinning my own content.
I was just having fun sharing stuff
that I would find on Nordstrom
or, and then I was watching it sell out in a second.
That's so nice.
It was so painful.
It was chronological in turn.
Yeah, it was chronological feed.
No impression based or engagement based speed.
It was, you share something and immediately
it was sent to all those people
and then it would sell out in seconds.
That's crazy.
Yeah, affiliate marketing at that time.
I was making really good money.
Yeah.
(laughing)
Yeah, I mean, I bet.
Like, so new and uncapped probably.
Yeah, there weren't still uncapped.
But I wasn't negotiating deals.
I was just saying yes for free.
I thought it was cool.
I didn't know I could get paid for it.
Yeah.
You know, and then you realize it's then,
you know, an agency reached out,
wanted to represent me and then I started dealing
with contracts and started understanding,
you know, working with Coca-Cola's
maybe a 90 day pay cycle,
things like that on the business side.
You started relearning and then,
yeah, eventually pioneering the content creation side
'cause I didn't really wanna be the next Oprah.
I wanted to make cool content
and started white labeling content for Target
and Home Depot and really loving it
and honing my skills as a stylist
and art director and creative director,
which then when I went through kind of a
big life change personally,
I went through a divorce, became a single mom.
I realized I need more stability
than what freelancing can provide.
Even though this is great and fun,
I can't pay my bills with shampoo and, you know.
(laughing)
And so I thought, well, I'm gonna take these skills
and I'm gonna pivot quickly into agency life.
And so I started working on influencer marketing agency
on the agency side.
Yeah.
And it was super easy for me to just, you know,
I brought in Ralph's was a client,
Ralph's grocery store, or Smith's, you know, Kroger.
Yeah, and that's how you ended up.
And that's how I got in that.
And then I ended up being a creative director
for Road Trippers, which was a road trip application
that got acquired by Thorne in the series.
I knew Road Trippers.
Yeah, we're probably the same age range.
Yes.
Yeah, turning 40 is the same age.
Yeah, I'm turning 40, I'm turning 39.
But the Botex has done me well.
Okay.
(laughing)
Let's put it out there.
Keep it packed.
My head is to wear glasses now.
(laughing)
Yeah.
So, yeah, I made a whole career out of it,
but it's really helped me going from creator
to agency to brand.
Yeah.
Now I have this unique career experience
where I can empathize with each.
And I know how to be a good client.
I know what the expectations are of our creators.
I know also now I can empathize with the brand side
and how difficult it is.
Yeah.
But it's really rewarding being on the brand side
because for once I can really see the needle move.
Yeah.
I cannot see it when you are freelancing
and you're freelancing.
No.
You really can't.
And it's like you feel like,
'cause I also, one of the pillars of my life,
besides customer, is I also accidentally started an agency
and accidentally hired a bunch of people
to run that agency.
But you're absolutely right of like,
it's really fun creating and doing things for brands, right?
And being engulfed in it from the agency side.
But at the same time, it's so different
than actually being a brand, right?
Like it says so different than being a brand
where it's like you really can see that like change
as you go in the brand.
And then on the agency side, it's like,
you know you're helping, you know you're contributing,
you know you're doing the things,
but at the same time it's like, it's just different.
And I think there's no right or wrong with it.
I actually like love like all the sides, you know?
I mean B2B now.
Like I love that side of it.
I love this side, I love brand side, I love all of it.
I just think it's like you just different perspectives
that have created a full on career for myself.
- Yeah, I talk a lot about now on,
so you know I didn't get rid of my million followers,
it still happened.
But I spend most of my time doing brand work.
And so I thought, well what am I gonna do
with this community that I have
that has really been with me over, well over a decade?
And I started just sharing my life
as people have seen me pivot many times.
I realized, oh I'm creating a personal brand
around the idea of reinvention.
Because, and that's a whole new opportunity for us
in the age that we're in,
is that you can reinvent yourself
as many times as you want.
- Yeah.
- And that's a new thing.
- I know, I know you're absolutely right and I love it.
- I love it too.
- I feel like we have to have a whole other episode.
- That's true.
- But I will say that a lot of people know my past too,
like went to art school,
worked a lot on customer service, customer success,
products marketing, then E-com,
then doing this, doing that, back to B2B now.
- Yeah.
- Doing content and evangelism work for customer
and also have this agency.
But my point is, you can have so many different pillars
in your life, on your own personal brand,
and it's absolutely okay.
Like you don't have to have one definitive career path
forever.
You can try on different stuff.
And I think it's really awesome,
even on your career path,
like doing the creator realm,
working in the agency, being the creative directory,
and now doing brand marketing, like girl,
like you know so much about that brand,
how to build a brand from a strategic
and experience point of view.
- I do, and I think that it's still hard.
Sometimes you know, as you're talking to people
and advocating, you have your own personal narratives, right?
And how you communicate,
I used to get down on myself thinking,
"Man, I have such a squiggly career path.
"Like I'm not gonna be good at just,
"you kinda wanna be good at one thing."
But you realize, "No, there is so much power
"in being a multifaceted creative."
And how much all of those different experiences
inform my role as a VP of brand for this company.
And sure, there might be a lot more to learn ahead of me,
given that this is the first time I've really been
on the brand side compared to maybe someone
who's the same age as me who's only done brand.
- Right.
- But how many people can say that they built a following
to a million followers on their own,
or to do these brand deals on their,
like I have to remember and not diminish the wins
that I've had, same with you,
that you've had along the way that make you worthy
of the position that you are today.
You know, imposter syndrome is a real thing.
- Yeah.
- But the number's shitting all over ourselves.
- Yeah.
- And it's what makes you stand out.
And so yeah, I have no idea if this is,
if I'll always stay brand side, I have no idea.
Today it works.
- Tomorrow you could be a CEO of your own brand.
- Let's do it, I don't know.
- Who knows?
- I mean, I don't want anyone to hear that
and think I'm moving.
I'm not, I'm staying.
- She's not ready for that.
The point is in 10 years, you don't know.
- No, I don't.
- Yeah.
- And I think working with a,
I worked with a career coach last fall
because I was starting to feel like these parts of me
were boring with each other.
Like I needed to choose, do I want to go back
to being a full time creator and creative
and working for myself or do I, you know,
I had like one of those moments of,
I don't know what I'm talking about.
- What am I doing?
- Yeah, what am I doing with?
I think we have those every now and then.
- All the time.
- And so I hired this career coach.
We did four sessions later and she said,
"Why can't they both coexist?
"Why do you, why are you so set on one or the other?"
And I thought,
"Wow, okay."
Yeah, what does it look like for them both to coexist
and to stay in my life and let them work together,
not fight each other?
- Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And I think there's nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with that.
And you can have many different fucking hats.
- Yeah.
- You have all the fucking hats you want.
- Yeah.
- You know?
I think that I just don't want to bring that,
that energy that we're, you know,
'cause I think a lot of us are tired.
- Yeah.
- I don't know about you, I can use that.
- I'm tired too, I promise you.
- So I think it's also like, okay,
what does it look like to have a full
and also balanced life?
I don't believe balance is a unicorn.
I think balance is something that you choose
and create for yourself.
It just might look different on different days.
So what does that really look like for me?
Well, that still looks like maybe,
80 to 90% of my work hours are this.
And then I do some work on the side.
- Yeah.
- It's not, it is also just opening my mind
of how they can coexist
and like what the actual expectations are.
- Yeah.
- Of myself.
'Cause I don't want to bring that hustle.
I'm in the soft ambition era.
- Yeah, I'm not there yet.
I'm in the hard ambition era.
- I'm trying.
- I'm a girl.
Yeah.
I think that's a whole other podcast
about hustle culture and everything else.
- That's what it's saying.
- Yeah, hustle culture.
I'm tired.
- I am very tired, but I think I can't,
and maybe it's 'cause we're millennials,
we can't break it, you know?
I literally don't know how to break it.
- I have to, I don't think I can,
I must die in my life.
- I know.
I see, if you're viewing in,
it's right there.
This is from stress.
- We both are experiencing some stuff right now.
(laughing)
- Well, Alex, I really appreciate you coming on.
And before we depart,
please tell the audience where they can find you.
- Yeah, I'd love for you to find me over on LinkedIn.
It's just my name, Alexandra Vailas.
And I'd love to connect with you on Instagram.
It's A-V-E styles.
And no, I did not brand myself in the right way.
(laughing)
- It works.
- That's a word. - That's a word.
- Yeah, I can't, I mean, I guess I could,
but I have it, so it's A-V-E styles.
'Cause it's my, that's how I started.
That's how I started on Instagram.
- Got it.
Cool.
Well, I really appreciate you coming on.
And to everybody out there listening or viewing in,
I appreciate you tuning in,
and we'll see you next Thursday.
Thank you.
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That means that you like me and I like you,
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