After selling his first company, Ryan Babenzien was looking for his next venture and decided to create the perfect direct-to-consumer company.
And like many good ideas, this one came to me in the shower: “After using a lot of lotion during the New York winter, I wondered if there was something about the shower water that was making my legs drier than they were used to,” Ryan says.
He discovered through his research that American water contains substances such as chlorine that are bad for hair and skin. JollyA company that makes filtered showerheads was born. In 2023, the company’s second year in business, it generated more than $28 million in revenue. Ryan will share his viral product development and sales strategy in the coming days.
Building the framework for your ideal e-commerce business
Ryan applied the lessons he learned from his first company to his next project: a sneaker brand that he later sold to Steve Madden. He knew that the fashion industry has a lot of challenges with sizing, so he wanted his next brand to be one-size-fits-all.
Ryan also noted that consumer behavior is hard to change, and he wanted to sell something that people use habitually, ideally every day.
The final element of his framework was finding products that satisfied customers’ vanity. “Vanity is a huge driver of our consumption and purchasing consideration,” says Ryan.
He discovered that if he sold his filtered showerhead as a beauty product rather than a plumbing fixture, he could meet all three requirements.
Designing a more recognizable shower head
Jolie set out to make the showerhead not only functional, but beautiful as well. Ryan and his team aimed to create a product that was instantly recognizable and visually striking. “We wanted it to be so striking that when you go to a friend’s house and walk into their bathroom, they’ll say, ‘Oh, you’ve got a Jolie,'” Ryan says. He compared it to how the Nest thermostat revolutionized the design of a mundane household fixture.
Eliminate waste with business technology
What sets Jolie apart is its highly efficient operating model: Unlike many startups with large teams, Jolie has been able to achieve eight-figure revenue with just three full-time employees.
Ryan attributes this success to the technology available to e-commerce businesses today. “Ten years ago, you needed 20 people to start something because everything didn’t exist yet,” Ryan says. “Then Shopify came along and leveled the playing field.”
Leverage user-generated content
Instead of relying heavily on paid advertising, Jolie leveraged user-generated content and collaboration with creators. This strategy involved working with creators who were genuinely willing to share their experiences to build the product. Thus, user-generated content increased brand awareness through word-of-mouth marketing.
The challenge, according to Ryan, was to build a system to do this at scale. “When most people think about user-generated content, they probably think of 10 or 20 pieces a month. We’re creating 600 to 700 pieces of content a month,” Ryan said.
To learn more about Jolie’s clever marketing strategy, Shopify Master Podcast.
