The evolution from personal life stylist to curating and building a 16-employee luxury gift business SIMONE LEBLANC
Simone Le Blanc
One of the unique and magical things about a gifting company is that every gift that's purchased is given to someone, and that's an opportunity for a new customer right there, which is really a sweet, magic, special sauce.
Anne McGinty (00:17.578)
Welcome to episode six of How I Built My Small Business, the show that is dedicated to sharing the insight that entrepreneurs have about how to start and grow small businesses. Join us as we unravel the stories behind their entrepreneurial journeys. I'm Anne McGinty, your host, and today we'll be talking with Simone LeBlanc of her eponymous business about her eureka moment, seizing opportunity and pursuing a vision.
Simone was a personal life stylist who turned a routine task of selecting personalized gifts for her clients, family, and friends into a luxury gift box business for Hollywood's elite. From curating gifts for her clients to being hailed as the gift-giver extraordinaire, Simone's expertise shines. Featured in the New York Times, Vogue, Architectural Digest, Elle Magazine, Goop, and more, her gorgeous curated gifts have become the go-to for A-List clients. You can find a link through to her business in this episode's description.
Thank you to our listeners for being with us today. Simone, thanks for coming to the show.
Simone Le Blanc
Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Anne McGinty
To start, can you tell us about how you got into the business of selling high-end gift boxes?
Simone Le Blanc
Sure.
I was working as a personal stylist in Los Angeles and working with clients with their wardrobe and helping them find the type of clothing that suited their personality and brought out the identity that they wanted to bring out. And as I built a relationship with these clients and a trust was gained, the needs expanded. So
Whereas it started with clothing first, then they would say, hey, actually, I would love to have my office redesigned. I would love to have a gift for my child's teacher. And so it expanded into more of a overall lifestyle, lifestyleist, everything creative that they needed in their worlds. And these clients were the type of clients that had very busy lives. They were public facing oftentimes. And
My ability to toggle between their private, personal, family-oriented needs and their public-facing point of view and perspective really brought me into a kind of unique, intimate space with them. And so what I saw as their needs started to grow and they started to ask more from me was that everyone wanted gifts. And oftentimes these gifts were needed for ad hoc needs. Oh, I'm going to...
party, my niece is getting married, all kinds of different needs started to arise. And then holiday season would come and holiday season all of a sudden would be a gift list sent at midnight by their personal assistant saying, can you help me with these 1500 gifts that I made?
Anne McGinty
Whoa.
Simone Le Blanc
And I started to see a pattern in that. And I started to see that there was no one out there that was doing this. We would have... luxury brands that we could shop with. We would have, you know, nice kind of like unique mom and pops. And then there were gift baskets that were basically wine and cheese gift baskets. And so what I really was trying to do was to fill the space for gifting needs that felt high end, high touch, luxurious and personal. And I just couldn't find them anywhere. And so I started creating them and.
As I started creating them in my living room, then on my dining room table, then in my kitchen, because it grew and grew, I saw that this was really a business that was needed by a lot of people. And so I started to form that into this niche, luxury-minded, yet accessible concept.
Anne McGinty
So how long did you juggle continuing to work as a personal stylist for these individual families running a gift business?
Simone Le Blanc
I really started to build the core concept and work with expanding that, I'd say for about a year. But what started to happen as it happens with businesses and their trajectory and their growth is that the concept took on a few different iterations. So
The core concept was always these accessible, cool, interesting, unique, discovery-find gift boxes at different price points. But I still had the layer of luxury, high-touch, one-of-a-kind, bespoke gifting as an offering that I did as a service. And so what that allowed me to do was access a really broad range of clients, which was my intention. So I kept this high-touch level as an offering. And that allowed.
certain clients to feel comfortable with my taste level and my brand positioning, knowing that I felt comfortable in the realm of very high touch, very bespoke, but they could still get the gift for $100 and kind of be able to work in that broad range.
And I knew that at the lower price point end, I would be able to access clients who would say, oh, this is a really aspirational brand. Maybe someday I can get to this custom project for a 50th anniversary for my parents, but I can buy the $100 thing right now. And so I would say that I kept the bespoke aspect forward facing and visible even longer than I was accepting those types of.
projects because it was something that was really interesting to talk about and something people were really curious about. And so that stayed as a concept in my business for a few years. And then I ended up transitioning really to a straightforward e-commerce based business that deals in volume projects as well as individual items.
Anne McGinty
What was your first significant order?
Simone Le Blanc
Yes.
I'm just trying to think of how to define significant. Because there was volume, where I was like, wow, this concept is really working. And then there was press, where it really blew it out of the water. And I would say, right away, I could tell that the concept was working, because I had proof of concept from the back end, from seeing the need. And I knew that I was filling a void. So seeing that I could instantly fill that slot was really exciting. What started to happen is that,
word spread and press inquiries started coming in and I was featured in, I heard my name on NPR and I was like, how did they know about me? And they were like, it's really a thing, this trend, this woman Simone LeBlanc started this concept and
It was a new concept because at that point nobody had reworked and upgraded a very old and kind of stodgy idea. So I was known as the reinventer of the gift box. That's kind of what the tagline was out there in the press as. And a woman named Jamie King, who's an actor, came to me and just fell in love with my gifts and said, oh, I want to give a gift to my friend Kim Kardashian, who just had a baby.
I was like, okay, let's put a baby gift together. And so she sent it to Kim and then Kim blogged about it and wrote about it. And then that day I got $45,000 in sales.
Anne McGinty
Oh my gosh.
Simone Le Blanc
Which I was actually heading to.
a market, a craft market, and I had all of my boxes. And when I got to the market and set up, I was like, everything is sold. I have nothing to sell. Everything is sold. Everything is gone. This is amazing. And also, what do I do? How do I fix this problem?
Anne McGinty
So how did you handle those orders?
Simone Le Blanc
I called all of the vendors that I worked with. So we handled the orders. We shipped everything. We basically had one assistant. Everything was at that point upstairs in my house, out of the studio at my house.
We shipped everything. We went to every local place within a five-mile network of who distributes, who does FedEx, how do we do this, got all of those orders out, frantic. I had my mom helping, I had my brother helping. I just called all hands on deck to get it done, and we did. And then I did a mix of the vendors that I knew that could deliver quickly.
I just put versions of things together. So we just found a way to figure it out. And we're like, it's not going to be the exact box that you see on the site, but we have a version of it that's just as good. And people, fortunately, were saying, we trust you. We'd love to just get it and make it happen.
Anne McGinty
At that point, were your products branded with your label?
Simone Le Blanc
No. So it was all third party vendors that I worked with. And it was unique, wonderful, amazing people.
It was exciting because I could call them and say, okay, we have this amazing order. And at the same time, as my business was building, I was helping them build their business because I was giving them really good orders consistently. And when you work with much larger companies, they want to get a really big discount and I wasn't asking for that from these vendors. So I was really working with them on their terms as well to try and help elevate their businesses.
Anne McGinty (09:55.71)
And how did that first client, you said Jamie King, hear about you?
Simone Le Blanc
Somebody ordered a gift and sent it to her. And this is really one of the unique and magical things about a gifting company is that every gift that's purchased is given to someone and that's an opportunity for a new customer right there, which is really a sweet magic special sauce. So what would you say is your division between your custom clients and your online gift box orders?
At this point, we are about 90% online gift box orders. And that really was something intentional that took a few years to build. And that path was really built around scalability and expansion into how do we take this away from a high-touch concept, keep that kind of poignancy and perspective of the business.
at scale and volume. There have been many pivotal moments that I've faced in building the business. The first one was really when I started to understand the value of how important it is to have a team that works well together. You're only as good as your team. And as I started to get deeper into the business,
I really started to understand the value of legacy knowledge of the business. And you have people on your team that understand the origin of the business as well as where you want to go. There's an incredible value to that. And as I scaled up the business and started to grow, I expanded my team very quickly because I needed to. And I did that, which is something that's common. But
What happens oftentimes at a business is you have to scale up quickly because the demand is there and you try and just put the pieces together and make it work. And what I found is that I was hiring for roles and positions where I didn't even know what these roles meant. There would be, you know, somebody who was an e-comm manager and I had no idea what an e-comm manager did. And so I was pulling in people that had expertise in these certain areas and
it was challenging for them because as a leader, I didn't know how to lead them. I didn't understand even what their roles were, so they had to teach me. And that sometimes can be a great thing and sometimes can be a really challenging thing. And for me, as a creative visionary leader, not a great people manager, that was a challenge for me in the business. And so what I learned from that was, you know, you really have...
the option of a slower and steadier growth, and you can go that way and try and understand step by step what that process is. Or you can jump 10 leaps forward, which is what I did. And there potentially could be fallout from that. And that's what happened with me at a certain point of the business where I had, I think, it was 16 people working for me.
Anne McGinty
My goodness.
Simone Le Blanc
And it was too much. It was too much for me as a leader to manage and handle. And so that was kind of a shakedown of understanding where I was like, OK, this is growing too fast. This is way too far out of my personal human capacity to manage. I need to scale back and make this more sustainable long term for me. And as that was happening, I didn't understand that was an influx period that a lot of businesses do go through. But now I look back.
and have learned, I'm like, oh, this is a very common stage for businesses to go through. Absolutely. And another really pivotal moment for me was we got investment from angel investors and
Learning about the process of fundraising, learning about what an angel investor is versus venture institutional funding versus taking loans from a bank and funding it yourself was an incredibly in-depth process to understand. And I learned so much from it. I think for us, angel investment was the way to go because it's more of a intimate relationship that's based on...
an understanding of who the founder is and what the long-term vision is of the business versus an investment, like an institutional investment from a venture fund that is looking for a J curve in growth, which requires a certain type of infrastructure and push towards growth all the time.
Anne McGinty
So what did you do with that investment?
Simone Le Blanc
I hired an operations lead.
And he is amazing. He actually started the first gifting business ever on the internet. It was called Red Envelope and his name is Tom Bazone. And he came in with just old school knowledge in so many ways and really helped teach me about team infrastructure on the ground, understanding of operations, everything from how do you set up a warehouse for maximum efficiency?
how many steps does it take to get to A to B to C? How do you set up the space so you can move around it efficiently? To an understanding of customer data and what I needed to look for, what my Shopify platform data could tell me, to understanding.
marketing and what you should expect from marketing return to product and understanding inventory and cash flow. He really helped teach me so much.
Anne McGinty
Did you try to find somebody to handle operations?
Simone Le Blanc
Yeah, I did. My angel investors, I too said this is really what a portion of this money should be spent towards is having somebody who can help you set this business up for the growth potential.
Anne McGinty
I feel like it takes a humbleness to step aside and recognize where your skills can shine and where you just need to bring somebody in to handle it.
Simone Le Blanc
I love that word humble because that's a word that I think about often and I think really is required for being a leader in so many ways because
you need to have humility and awareness around, you know what, this person does this particular thing way better than I do. And that's an asset to the company as a whole. So if you can put your ego and check around that and let people do what they do well and learn from them and be OK with that, then it helps the whole business as an entity. I agree. Everybody has something to offer. Definitely.
Anne McGinty
So in curating your products, what criteria do you follow to maintain a balance between uniqueness and mass appeal?
Simone Le Blanc
I love this question. I really think a lot about the uniqueness of the product in the variety that we have in each gift box.
to kind of attain the special touch and be able to appeal to the masses. And what I returned to time and time again is the essence of the business. The essence of the business was really built on how do I create something for somebody who doesn't necessarily have the words to say what they wanna say? How do I create a product that creates an emotional response and an emotional feeling?
And so that's the core of how I think about all of the product offerings. And then I really drill that down into a kind of nuanced formula of emotion and technicality and
Every box has a concept to it. So we have the staycation box, which was the first box that I made and still is one of our most popular styles. And really at the end of the day, it's a spa box that you can do at home. But we build the concept of staycation. How do we create that mood? How do we create that emotion for somebody? So there's storytelling with every box that we have. We use quotes, we talk about the product that's in there.
And then with the product spread, we really offer product that we understand the origin of where it comes from, we make sure that the ingredients are quality ingredients, we also make sure that if it's going to be a box that we're going to have as a classic offering for us, that the vendors can scale up with us. If we have a client that wants 150 of them in a week or 500 of them, can they do that?
So that's something that we think about as well. And we really try and balance what is understandable. Is there something that's basic that every person can experience the joy the moment they open it? I always think of it as something for now and something for later. So they open the box and what can they enjoy in this moment? Is it something that they get to eat? Do they get to make themselves a tea? If they make themselves a tea, is there something beautiful like a tea strainer that they can always have for later?
So I really think about the present and the future with the gift.
Anne McGinty
And where do you source your goods? I think everything at this point is private labeled?
Simone Le Blanc
The majority of it is we still work with different fabricators and makers in categories that either wouldn't make sense for us to create or somebody does it better than we would. So we work collaboratively, like we work with a chocolate maker, Valerie Confections. I'm not a chocolate maker, but we make beautiful packaging and have created a custom offering with her. And then a lot of our product is private label. And so I work with fabricators with our linen.
in our candles and things like that. Is this something that you're doing within the country or are you traveling? I travel initially to source a lot of these products and then I work with different countries who are known for these types of materials. So we get our journals made in India and we work with a family who has been producing journals and paper by hand for multiple generations. They hand dye all of our journal coverings.
We worked with multiple iterations to get the colors right and all of that. So they do paper beautifully and they do it the best. And then we also work with manufacturers in India who create our brass goods and they do a beautiful job with that. We work with people in the country to do our lavender eye pillows. So we really work in different countries.
Anne McGinty
How are you finding them? Because there are probably thousands. So how are you choosing?
which one to work with. Yeah, there's a lot of discernment that needs to be applied when choosing vendors to work with for private label products. And really, that is a process of understanding how does the person speak about their product. The way that they speak about the product is that match up with the quality of the product when I see it, when I hold it, when we smell it, when we taste it.
A lot of this comes from in the field learning of just making mistakes and trying things out. And then part of my expertise has been understanding the quality of product over years and years of being involved with so much of it.
Anne McGinty
Sounds like you have multiple parts to juggle with the business. What would you say has been the hardest situation that you have ever come across? And what did you do about it?
Simone Le Blanc
Great question as well. The hardest situation that I've ever come across in the business was a financial hardship situation, which was we were considering an initial investment and had a decision to make to scale up to meet the sales goals of what this investment would be. So at a point in the year, because it's a gift business, we need to be.
loaded and ready for Christmas by July. That means all of our inventory has to be purchased. You have to have sales projections of what will happen for that Christmas. And in so much of business, this type of a situation is a guess. We hope it'll be what it was last year plus more. We have to rely on the data that we have and what's happening in the marketplace and say,
okay, we're gonna bank on this happening. You can say yes, or you can say no. So you have to make a decision, there's a crossroads. So we made a decision to scale up to a certain level of investment that we were taking, and we purchased a large amount of inventory for another inflection point in the company, which would have been a large scale growth.
and had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in inventory and product. And that deal fell apart. And we had to figure out how to pay for all of that we had invested in. I had made that decision to do that because we were very close. Like we had the contracts. It was like the pen was at the paper ready to sign and it fell apart. And so that was a huge, huge learning process for me. It took about a year and a half to recover from that.
and it was hard and it was scary and I didn't know if we would be able to. And we did. And the way that we did that was we got back to basics, bootstrap, day one, okay, I'm in there packing the boxes, I'm in there shipping this stuff. It's just back to day one processing and working with the business. And so eventually, we worked our way out of that debt and it really taught me to understand.
the risk that's involved in taking really big steps and look at that risk and say, let's go to the worst case scenario. What is the worst case scenario of this situation if we play it forward? There's a best case scenario, let's live in that, let's have fun, let's be alive and get energized by that. But let's also look at the worst case scenario. What does that look like? Is the risk worth it? Is this something that we can manage if it gets to that point?
Anne McGinty
That's what most entrepreneurs do though, is they live and learn.
Simone Le Blanc
Absolutely.
Anne McGinty
Trial and error.
Simone Le Blanc
Entrepreneurship is so much about endurance and understanding that there's peaks and valleys all the time along the road of business ownership. And it's about endurance and kind of steadying yourself to say, OK.
We've gone through something similar. We've gotten past that. We can get past this. And then when times are really, really good, making sure you celebrate them, it's really important too. And also knowing that tomorrow can look different.
When we had that huge influx of inventory, the strategies that I found to be the most effective were really reinvention. And so it was a mix of marketing and storytelling. There were ways to reinvent some of the product that we had. How do we tell a new story about this product? How do we leverage what we have and create newness in a way that is authentic, in a way that is needed for the customer?
expanding to meet the moment with let's get creative. How do we pull this together and find new ways to do that? So we created new product and told new stories about the product. Press loves newness, clients love newness, customers love newness, so through emails we would.
tell stories in a new and different way. And then we also did a lot of gifting ourselves. You know, we reached out to influencers, press, clients who were repeat customers who we hadn't seen for a while, people that we thought, oh, you bought this at this price point and you came back and you bought this three times. Here's a new offering.
at a similar price point, why don't you try one, see if you like it. We discounted product, you know, if you buy 10 of something, we'll give you a 10 percent discount and really just tried multiple things. And that's part of what this journey is, is sometimes you have to pull into your back pocket and say, what do we have? What can we try? Let's see what sticks and what works. And ultimately, it was a multitude of those things that worked.
bit by bit to make it happen. It wasn't like, there's a clear winner here. It's kind of a lateral thing where everything turns the dial 10% and then you find yourself moving forward.
Anne McGinty
You were hustling, it sounds like.
Simone Le Blanc
Absolutely.
Anne McGinty
And now what strategies do you use just on a general basis to promote your... Your line.
Simone Le Blanc
The strategies we use now that work really well for us are our email list. I cannot stress enough how important and valuable each customer is. And then the customers that come to you and actually care enough about the brand to want to receive your emails, the value of that is incredible. They grow over time. We have customers that have purchased from us 65 times, 100 times.
Anne McGinty
Whoa.
Simone Le Blanc
It's the nature of the business where they have a need and we're solving that need and they trust us to handle that. So that's something that we take very seriously and we're so incredibly grateful for. So we try and service them in the best way that we can by creating special offerings in our newsletters. We'll do sales, we'll do first looks at things in the newsletters and offer people kind of exclusive peeks at things. We do influencer marketing, I guess is what it's called these days.
But for us, that really is not about paying influencers to talk about things. It's about offering them gifts if they have a need for it. So we really try and lean into that authenticity. We are a small brand, and there's only so much marketing that you can do. The marketing dollars when going to ads for us are somewhat limiting. We put a little bit of money towards ads, Google ads.
and that works well as far as visibility, but to really play in that game right now is a vastly...
changing experience. It's very expensive and it changes all the time. So we try and keep it grassroots, honestly. Word of mouth.
Anne McGinty
That's the best.
Simone Le Blanc
And I feel like if you have a good product and you've seen that people like it and you feel confident about your position in the marketplace, okay, we're priced right, people come back, we hear good things from people, that is the goal that everybody wants. So if you can keep doing that well.
trying to keep expanding your network through that way, then that's the stuff that carries you through.
Anne McGinty
And how are your sales divided up throughout a calendar year?
Simone Le Blanc
Christmas and Mother's Day are the busiest times of the year for us. We definitely have big influx of sales within those two time periods. And the thing about them is that they come.
very quickly and they're very short. So we do have to flex up on our best sellers and our new products for those holidays specifically. But what we've done is really worked to also create an inventory spread and product offering that does maintain consistency throughout the year. So Christmas and Mother's Day can be a bonus, but the business is sustainable throughout the year. And we do that by category. So we look at, okay.
People always need birthday gifts. People always need baby gifts. They always need bereavement and get well gifts. So how do we maintain this kind of annual spread of offering and then pop in exciting things that are really seasonal based throughout the year? And we might get less of those units, but it's new and exciting. And we can kind of pop in the newness here and there.
Anne McGinty
How far in advance are you lining up your products for these peak holidays?
Simone Le Blanc
So there's the best intentions and then there's the reality of how far ahead we can get of the products. What's funny is, you know, Christmas is such an immersive experience, the holiday season, where everywhere around you it's fed to you and everybody's living in it. And I happen to love the season because I love to craft and I create the environment and I want to live in Christmas. And so every year in January I say,
I just have to remember to just live in Christmas and keep this. I have, you know, a box of things that I have, there are ideas that I want to remember. And I'm like, okay, come May when everybody's feeling like they were in a getaway for summer, get into Christmas mode. You know, I have to remember that. And I honestly never do because I'm loving the sun and I'm thinking about Mother's Day and flowers and it's a whole different experience. But the cycle is that we need to have Christmas in by
late July to have the product in. So it's about three months ahead of time to have it in, have it.
you know, starting to get packed. We now work with a fulfillment company who does the packing of things. So to be able to get ahead of that and plan for everything. And then of course, there's photo shoots that have to happen. So we need to style everything. We need to do the storytelling and get ahead of it. So we really try for Christmas to be end of summer, have everything planned. And then for Mother's Day, it can be a little bit later, but by March, we have everything planned for May Mother's Day.
Anne McGinty
That sounds about right.
Simone Le Blanc
I mean, with our hard good, that we make like our brass items, we stock those all year long and they're kind of repeated. So we just bulk up on those orders.
Anne McGinty
You mentioned fulfillment. When did you decide to shift your packaging and shipping to a fulfillment company and how has that transition been?
Simone Le Blanc
We shifted the business from our own studio to a fulfillment company about a year and a half ago. And
That was an incredible move for us and for the positive in so many ways. And I'll tell you why. It, of course, also has had its challenges, which I will tell you about. And the decision to do that was really based around a crossroads of, OK, we need a bigger space than we have. We're in Los Angeles. How much does it cost to have a space in Los Angeles that can house a certain amount of people? We would always have to flex up during peak periods, which means if I was running a team of about six people all year round, coming to these peak periods, I all of a sudden needed a team of 14 people. And to be able to afford a space that can hold that many people all year long just
a lot of overhead, more overhead than I was comfortable with committing to. We had gone through COVID, which was actually a really profitable time for our business. People really were wanting to stay connected and they did a lot of that through gifting, but I knew that it was an anomaly period. And so it kind of broke the data for everyone, for so many companies. Like what's normal?
What's normal as far as sales? We don't know because there was such an influx. So it got to a point where I said, if these sales that we're experiencing through this time period of COVID continue, then we have definitely outgrown the space that we're in and we need to flex up and get to a bigger space. So we moved to a fulfillment company knowing that they could also.
not only manage our day-to-day sales through e-comm, but also flex up and do a thousand units for us at Christmas if needed. So the benefit of that was the scalability factor and knowing that the product is always protected, you know, it's in a space that can house all of it. If we need to buy deeper into certain products because it helps us with the price point, if we meet a certain MOQ, it's called a minimum order quantity.
this place can house all of that. So the flexibility and scalability of that was awesome for us. The challenges of that is being two steps away from the systems and processes. So we had to shift everything to work within a new processing system that this fulfillment company holds. And so it was taking it out of our small six person team brain and giving our baby to this new infrastructure. And
toggling back and forth between what our process was and what their process was. So it was really a relationship building process and I'm really proud of them and us. I'd say it's been 90% great, which is much better than I thought it would be or could be. And then there's still challenges. They missed a quality control on something and we hear about it from a customer. And that's.
Painful. It's painful. You never want that to happen. But it's part of the growth process. And it's a learning. That's an opportunity for us to talk to our customer about it. And they see us. They know we're a small business. And it's a choice we made for growth. And it's been overall a good thing.
Anne McGinty
Overhead-wise, is it cost beneficial?
Simone Le Blanc
It's actually kind of a flatline cost. But I'd say it's an emotional freedom. At first, I thought, oh my gosh, we'll save so much on overhead because we don't have our monthly rent.
We don't have all of the people that we needed to have, but what we do have is minimums. And so we get charged on a minimum basis. So if we go in a dip in sales, which 2023 Q1 and Q2 has been a dip in sales, a lot of shakeups happening right now with small businesses and retail businesses. So we still have to pay the same rate on the backend for services, even if we're selling less of a unit.
So it's kind of like you have to be able to open your arms wide enough to hold all of that in order to make it work. Right now we're at the stage of the business where we're applying a long-term view of thinking where as I said about peaks and valleys, it's like, okay, we're in a dip period right now.
in the economy and sales. I think a bunch of small businesses are. A lot of them are. And I really think about this is where you really, you hold on and you just say, we're going to make it through this time period. We're going to get through this. We don't go crazy. Don't try all kinds of different things. Just stay like slow and steady and keep going and know that this eventually will shift. And we do still see all of our return customers. There's still a need for it. People are just spending differently.
And that's happening across the board. And a lot of that is related to just how the industry of retail and e-commerce is shifting because of all these big players.
Anne McGinty
Speaking of big players, who would you say are your biggest competitors and how do you differentiate your business from theirs?
Simone Le Blanc
That's a great question. I would say my biggest competitors, it's interesting because we kind of have it from the front end and the back end, meaning that...
When I started the business, as I said, we were kind of first out of the gate with this concept. And then really quickly, because it looked like, wow, this is such a beautiful concept, she's making them out of her living room, I can do this. Many people saw this as a business idea, and all of a sudden, there were 15 other businesses that were doing this as well. And it's interesting because I got to a certain point where I said, if they can scale that,
kudos to them because it is not easy. It's really complicated to be able to do this. And so what happened was there was kind of an influx of gift box businesses that started. And then everyone started to find their lane and find their place. Some people moved more into bridal focus. Some people moved more into kind of an Etsy perspective. I feel like I was able to maintain a stronghold on that luxury line, which is where naturally just from a brand and aesthetic standpoint.
we sat and stayed. And then some of the bigger players that I was looking to were more like, hey, we want to take on a Dean and DeLuca. We want to take on what Williams Sonoma is trying to do. Let's do this kind of high touch perspective at Volium and take that type of market on. There was a point in the business where I was wanting to shift into that. And now we've actually, again, kind of settled into who we are.
And I would say from a competitor perspective, there's not a lot of direct competitors with our brand positioned. There are a lot of gift box companies that do their own point of view well. So people have those choices, but I think we're really known for this kind of high touch, emotional quotient, luxury oriented gift box.
Anne McGinty
Yeah, you really have a niche.
Simone Le Blanc
Yeah.
Anne McGinty
And it sounds like so does everybody else.
Simone Le Blanc
Yeah.
Anne McGinty (38:44.326)
And in this country, there's enough space for all of you.
Simone Le Blanc
There really is. There really is. I mean, there have been times with competition. It's been tricky where I've seen, you know, people use our exact language on their website, our box name, the copy descriptions that I stayed up until midnight writing. No. And, you know, I've reached out to those people directly. And this is what can happen. So it's part of the process.
I will say something that's been interesting is, you know, seeing truly what Amazon has done as far as setting expectations around shipping should be fast and shipping should cost nothing. And so we've worked really hard to stay far away from that perspective as far as keeping our price points at what they need to be. We are more niche. We are.
little bit more kind of in the aspirational luxury realm because we can't compete with an Amazon. And once you try and play in that world, it's kind of impossible at this point. I think there are enough people in this country who feel like they shouldn't even try to compete with Amazon. Definitely. It's interesting in the sense that it's changed people's expectation around pace of product, but it's something that from an aesthetic and emotional standpoint, we stay far away from.
Anne McGinty
How do you balance the creative aspects of your business with the operational and strategic component?
Simone Le Blanc
Being the leader of this company really requires using left brain and right brain thinking. And I have to kind of protect my creative brain because I have to be able to think innovatively. And then there has to be a point in time where I can let my mind free to be creative and innovate without all the knowledge that I have of
what's coming, which is let's talk about margins, let's talk about lead times, let's talk about rate of sale and all of that. So I really, over time, have allowed myself the freedom to create. And that comes with calendaring up time to do that, allowing myself to swim in new ideas and explore kind of esoteric references and fun things. And then, OK, this is where I have to put on the other hat and say,
What can we sell this for? What is the margin? Are these going to be available? Where does this fit in the whole product spread? And toggle between those two things. And then I would say the deeper drop down to that really is around the data of profitability and revenue and spreadsheets and all of that, which I try and give myself time around those types of meetings. If I know we're going into a two hour, three hour financial planning meeting.
I will make sure I have nothing scheduled around that because my brain needs time to sink in and digest and rest. Because it's been a lot of learning and it's also can get very stressful. Fortunately, I have a wonderful CFO that I work with. And we figured out a language where he'll present something to me. And then I can reinterpret it in my way and kind of give it back to him and say, like, is.
this is what I'm hearing, is this what you mean? And so we've figured out our language and our way to communicate, which has been really helpful. And there's an aspect to it that is creative with the financial and the data. You can get creative with it. You do get to understand your customers and their needs and see how they, what their behaviors are, which is really fascinating.
Anne McGinty
Of your custom clients, which two or three have been the most memorable to you and why?
Simone Le Blanc
Well, I would say of my custom clients, I'll give you memorable, wonderful, and memorable, challenging. I will not name any names. Memorable, challenging has been a client who has come to us for a few years. And now I've said, I feel like our relationship has passed. We're not going to do this anymore.
Anne McGinty
Wow.
Simone Le Blanc
Because the expectation was just beyond the capacity of what was aligned with the budget that they had. And so I think anyone that has a business, I mean, you know, having formally been in a service based business as well, sometimes people want the stars and then they have the budget. And so I think that when you're starting out your business, I certainly did a lot of giveaway,
more than I needed to give down the road. That's what has to happen sometimes in the beginning of a business, I think. But at a certain point, you realize that comes at a cost to all of the other customers that you have, and it's just not something that's sustainable. So there was a customer who I worked with for a few years, a client, and they just continually didn't trust us. They wanted to...
put their process on top of our process. And we've created a process that we work with clients, and it works really well for hundreds of people. And that's what we do. And they kept pushing and pushing in every way. And I just had to say no. But they were very well known, and they were very prestigious. And so I got a little seduced by that. And then my gut had always told me this is going to be problematic, and now I listen to my gut. So I let that go.
But it's a good learning where you should listen to your gut. You can maybe try it. But if you see that you are right, then it's OK to say no. There are going to be other people that are out there. And what does it cost you in relation to all of your other customers that you have if you give one person so much of your time?
Anne McGinty
It's like the 80-20 rule. And if you get rid of those 20 that are costing you the 80 percent of the problems.
Simone Le Blanc
Yes.
Anne McGinty
It can just make for such a more peaceful business.
Simone Le Blanc
Definitely, definitely. And sometimes it's scary to say no to those where
come with a big budget, but that big budget doesn't always mean profitability. It's not fun. It's not what you want to do and not what you deserve. And then another client is a luxury goods brand, and they're known for their incredible leather goods and a heritage brand who I respect deeply. And they are wonderful clients. They come to us repeatedly. We do volume gifting projects with them. And one of the feathers in my caps was when they
had us produce leather goods for their gift. And it was just a real shining glory crowning moment for me. I was so excited. We created a beautiful gift box for them and they use some of our leather goods for their clients that they gifted. And it really felt like such an accolade.
Anne McGinty (45:27.606)
It is, how did they find you?
Simone Le Blanc
They found us through, I think, a web search, and then they found the website, and then they'd seen we have a lot of press listed, and they built trust by understanding the language that we use, the visuals of what we created, and then we built the relationship.
Anne McGinty
Speaking to that, how do you maintain and enhance your customer relationships and keep them connected to you?
Simone Le Blanc
Yeah, you know, the...
customer relationships that are straightforward through e-commerce. So someone can come and purchase on their own and they don't actually talk to us in any way. Those relationships really are maintained through our newsletters, through offerings, through continuing to have just a beautiful special product for them. And sometimes what we'll do is we'll go through our list and say, okay, wow, this person has purchased 30 times from us. Like, can we send them a candle? Let's send them a thank you.
I'm really a proponent of sending thank yous to the people that show up for you and letting them know, you know, we are a gifting business. And so to give back to customers in that way is really fun and exciting. And sometimes we'll reach out to customers and say, Hey, we're trying out this new product. We want to send you this. And just to be able to show appreciation that way is really special. And then with our clients that we do volume gifting projects with where we'll incorporate their branding or their logo or something like that.
the ones that still are a little bit more high touch. We love to just keep in touch with them throughout the year, check in on them, see how it goes. One of the really fun things is that we'll hear from the clients and say, this has been incredible. I received so many thank yous from people. So our job is to make them look good. And when we hear that we did that, it's really fulfilling and exciting. And so we stay in touch and ask how the gifts were received and things like that.
for the business. Our vision is really to go deeper into the categories that we see people really love and respond to and need time and time again. We love baby gifts. I also feel like grief is a really important space to work with. We're gonna continue to expand our offerings maybe a little bit more into the craft realm, which is something that I'm really excited about. And just continue to do our job in the best way that we can, which is...
beautiful value, brand storytelling, great product, and just continue to offer that in the most seamless, easiest way that we can for customers.
Anne McGinty (47:44.578)
And just for a closing question here, what advice would you give, this is a two-part question, either to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to enter the luxury gift industry or to your younger self?
Simone Le Blanc
The advice that I would give, I'll take the first part first, for...
people looking to get into the luxury business. I would say the luxury gifting business, really find your point of view, really look and understand the luxury marketplace and what is your special sauce that you have that isn't out there? Really, what is your twist on it? Because luxury is about quality, longevity, and experiential moments. So what can you give authentically
that will stand the test of time. And then the advice that I would give to my younger self is trust yourself. For entrepreneurs, there's a fire inside that's there. And that flame took a lot of iterations until I found what it would end up being with my business. But trust yourself and know that something inside of you is leading you on the right path. And the path.
won't always be easy, but if you stick to it, then you'll learn on that path and the instinct is leading you in the right direction.
Anne McGinty
Well, that's a wrap for today.
Simone Le Blanc
Oh, yay!
Anne McGinty
Thank you so much for being here.
Simone Le Blanc
This was so fun. Thank you for having me. I loved it.
Anne McGinty (49:30.638)
If you've made it this far, thanks for being here.
Today's key takeaways.
Build trust with your clients or potential customers, and that will help fuel organic word of mouth growth.
Test your core concept and keep on trying new iterations until you find something that works.
It's okay to say no to a client. Sometimes it's better to let go of an overly demanding client, even if it means that you will lose that revenue.
You have the option of a slower and steadier growth where you try to understand and plan more for the upcoming process, or you can leap 10 steps forward. But if you choose to leap, expect to come across some additional hurdles.
Stay humble and have humility as these are assets of a leader. Keep your ego in check and be willing to realize when there is someone better suited for the role than you are even if it's a senior position. Let people do what they do well and learn from them.
And look, is there a need for something that isn't currently available? Look for a niche, a void in the marketplace, and keep your ears open to opportunity.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please give us five stars on your favorite streaming platform. In the next episode, I'll be chatting with Peter Harrell of Rise Rigging, about turning a passion for outdoor education and rock climbing into a successful rope access business. And if you don't know what that is, as I didn't when I first heard about it, you will be extra fascinated.
So come back and check it out.
