How to Launch a successful DTC Brand with Matt Orlic from Inspired Brands

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Ecommerce Odyssey podcast. I'm here with Matt Orlich from Inspire Brands Group and we're going to talk about how a framework for launching a DTC brand. So Matt, perhaps you could you give us a little bit of background about yourself first? Yeah, thanks. I have me. So to give you a top level, I guess, over my life today in terms of entrepreneurship, I started on on 17 and since then I'm 33 now. 15 years. I've had 20 six different businesses in about 10 different verticals. So I guess it's allowed me to have a unique level of wisdom and experience in when it comes entrepreneurship. Okay, great. So you've launched a number of DTC brands I'm guessing. Yeah, a number of DTC brands at the moment, the main focus is QSkincare for us, support for supplements to name a few and then the ones that were really precisely at the moment. Okay, great. So what if you, you know, someone, so imagine you've got a, you know, you want to do DTC brand, right? What is the, what do you need to do before you start? What's the first thing that, you know, take us through the whole process? Yeah, I haven't known this a number of times. I think the best advice I can give anyone is that that's trying to reverse engineer everything from the narrative first, right? I think a lot of people find a product and they create a brand run of product. And what I've seen internally and also externally is that this doesn't really work. The best way to, I guess, create a brand is to allow lay the foundations first. And that starts from the narrative of the story, the brand story. Once you've got the brand story and then you attach a product that matches the story, then you attach a name to the brand, the match the story, the colors, et cetera. That's really really stems from that. That's probably the, the framework that I would use if we were starting again because everything stems from the narrative of the company. Okay. So what do you mean, okay, but in what about, you know, kind of funding or anything like what do you think? What's necessary if you want to, you know, start your DTC business? I think funding is not really necessary. I think what's necessary is trying to acquire online real estate within that narrative, right? So it's really about having created someone who want to brand store a narrative or a unique product and trying to test that out by the organic channels that social provides you. Okay. We're the best framework. Where do you find ideas? I mean, where would you start off with a, with the product research? Yeah, this is a funny one. Like, you know, back in the day when I was, obviously just money hungry, a lot of my ideas manifested from the ability to try and generate money. Where today I think that what I've learned is that money alone is probably very shallowated. Look at it. I gain a lot more value from authentic money that I create. Authentic money for me really means that, you know, a business that I developed that I joined so much that money is not really the prerequisite. So, you know, in all the business I've had, I felt the increase in well-being from companies that say, generating me a million dollars that I love doing every single day, opposed to companies that don't mean ten million dollars that potentially I didn't enjoy the process as much. So, yeah, today I'd be looking more in terms of what I actually fundamentally enjoy and love doing. And I grabbed a hint towards that more so than doing market research and looking at such an autistic way into the numbers and, you know, I guess, product. So why do you, okay? So what you, so you're saying, you know, find something which you love and it'll follow. I'm guessing you love football. So, yeah. So this is, I didn't work for the last four years. I took a lot of time off. I didn't really need to work anymore, but I didn't want to, I guess, engage in that rat race of, you know, chasing so much money. I felt like I was fairly toxic as I went through a different journey. So then I started looking, you know, I guess externally and saying, how can I combine some of the things that I love together in one business? And I used to be someone's professional footballer. I didn't make it because my, I guess, my, my body didn't really keep up from physical perspective. I technically was good. I love supplements. I've got some business. I love health. I love fitness. I love D to C brands. I love business. And this is where the football substance really came about. So I was tying in my passion for developing e-commerce brands, supplementation, biohacking, health and also football. And that's where you're going. So what do you, how do you go about developing a brand that I mean, what are the stages? So presumably the things like, you know, developing, getting a name and getting the, the visual assets, etc. What? Yeah. Like the first fundamental step is creating a narrative. And for me, the narrative was, I wanted to improve football performance for nutrition, education and supplementation. Right. And this is ultimately that narrative was most important for me because this is where I played when I was young. So I could help others achieve what I couldn't, you know, I thought I was in a good state. So then from that story, I went about creating a brand that was just for football players. And that's where football substance.com was created, right? Right. I had from my engineer products. We're just footballers. Do you see how everything kind of stops them from that narrative? Right. Okay. Then from there, I created a logo that was based on football and supplementation and, you know, education. So how important is it to me? What are the dos and don'ts of creating a brand? I think the don'ts is that just great story or narrative of brand that's that's not hyper focused. I think there's so much value in being a specialty today, especially in a crowded marketplace. People often think that if they specialize in certain industry or certain sector that they're not going to gain the revenues or the benefits or that, you know, a generalized company would, but it's actually not true. Yeah. You know, we underestimate how big a certain age could be. For example, football supplements for us people are just we're like the only ones in the world doing this currently maybe one other. But this is the biggest game in the world of 200 million players. The most money and most affluent. I guess or in the world yet no one specializing football because they're just creating general athletic. Submitted brands, they're not catering to football alone, which, you know, as you look at the market size, it's huge in terms of how many footballers there are. Okay. So what do you say in terms of, I mean, because you think the people should have a because obviously your brand is just football supplements, it does what it says. Right. Very, very, you know, I'm guessing you would you say that it's better to have a really kind of a brand that does what it says or something, which is a bit more, you know, one of these kind of generic brands. It doesn't really mean anything, but then, you know, it is quite easy to find. So I'm guessing you say if I search for super football supplements, right, probably an awful lot of things come up about football supplements. But if you were to search for, I don't know, just choose a, I don't know, one of these brands, apps and printers, I got an episode next to me, you know, it is, it is a name. It's kind of more uniquely defined. What do you think is the, I think it comes in narrative. I'll give you another example on QSkincare, another one of our brands. That brand was born from my biohacking background and my love of like technology. And also finding out that we're trying to reach the gap from dermatologists like treatments to home, because a lot of the treatments that I found that doing it at dermatologists, you have to consistently at home in for it's actually to have effect. So we're trying to think about how can we take dermatologist treatments and make it more affordable to people at home. That's where the whole story in the narrative came from. And then from that, we developed at home, LED mask that no one would use the clinic, but you can use it home. Now we're doing at home, nearly devices that use a home that, you know, you don't go to dermatologists. So it's all around the narrative. When people come to queue, I understand that all the products were developing is trying to bridge that gap between dermatologists and at home treatments. Okay. So what about getting the product manufactured? Once you've got a brand that you've got a product you want to develop. Depending on how technical the product is, we use everything from design firms to doing in our souls, layers with the factories. So when you go to the product manufacturing internally, the factories will have product designers and engineers, but they're never going to be, you know, at the level that you potentially want to work with if you've done a creative and also product. Probably a third party design agency would do a lot better job. But if you're creating a product where the variables are slightly out of scope, then I think you can work alongside with the existing factory and their internal team. So would you say that because you obviously, you're about, you're not white labeling products. You're developing your own products from scratch. Yeah. Now I think it's the start there. Is that a, I'm guessing that's a much riskier thing to do and also a more time consuming thing to do? Yeah, for sure. It requires a lot more resources and energy. It's a lot more risky, I guess, especially going to a new market, a new product, but then at the same time, you know, when I look at the landscape today, we have online real estate, right? In terms of let's say influencers, which are probably the most powerful vehicle to build a brand. How are you going to approach an influencer in a very crowded market? It's by developing a unique story in a unique product, really, that that influence can be, that wants to be attached to that brand and that story. This is where that level of investment doesn't really stem from just, you know, the product development cost, but it also is a little more efficient later on, which might require this flow to stay online from influencers this way. Okay, so you're all about, so, so, you're very focused on getting influence on influencer marketing. Yeah, look, it seems to be the quickest way to grow brands today, right? Again, authority in a crowded market place. It's a lot easier for people to speak if you're random yourself. Okay, it's never been a better time to be young or beautiful, I think. So, you're right. I just think it's, it's, you know, the Matthew Principle to those that have much will be given. Yeah. And all that. I just think these people that, you know, you get loads of followers and you get print money. That's great. And some of the people. What do the do's and don'ts? So obviously you have a product which is, I mean, a straight, you know, it's a lot of compliance that these products need to go through or. Or which one of those? What is any of them? Just, you know, if you've got, if you're developing some sort of skin care product, for example, or supplement presumably it needs to go through a lot of testing. Yeah, for sure. Like, you know, Qelskineke, the other products have to be FDA approved and that a group process is fairly lengthy, but nothing's out of the range. own like it's a simple process that just takes time running. Okay, so when you've been developing brands, what's gone really well and can you give us some examples of something so many badly, what mistakes have you made that you wouldn't want, the people should avoid? I think not being patient enough. That's probably the fundamental learning that I can take away from my experience. Some brands like a design, the first ever smart wallet with a brand called, with a technology called Tile, this is probably like six, seven years ago. I did a kick start, it didn't go too well, and I kind of just sacked the project and then years later people copied my concept, executed a lot better and created eight, nine thinker businesses out of it. Well, it's okay. But I think you see a lot of brands, the things just, you know, kept things come along at the wrong time. I mean, I've been doing this long enough now, so I remember the first kind of internet businesses that came along and these businesses, you know, a lot of the same ideas come around to again and again. And sometimes you can just be too early. Yeah, timings, everything. Yeah. I mean, you know, hello, fresh. I mean, there was some, some of the first I remember there was a whole lot of businesses that launched in about the year 2000 or 99 or something, which were very, were like hello fresh, but they just totally failed. And maybe it's, it is, I think you say, a lot of, a lot of timing involved. So let's talk about promotion. I mean, I know we have a lot, we talk to a lot of people that are strong on a big on Amazon. And you, the Amazon's not certainly your, your interest in. No, I think for us, I'd rather take control of the company, the customer's story mainly because of our market strategy always tends to an education model and we can't really educate consumers if we're a client on Amazon. And we find that the quality of customer that that comes for our store was always better than the customer that came for Amazon as well. Yeah, I think it all depends, depends on the brand and all the product that you're, they're designing and developing, whether what's more applicable. But for us, it hasn't really made sense at this moment. Okay, so how do you welcome channels to market to use for sure? Yeah, so we're strictly online and through someone online retailers. So we strategically choose someone online retailers to give us a bit of authority in the space. And then, yeah, we're strictly did to see, did to see more. Okay, so what you did to see, what you did to Shopify websites, we stick with Shopify and we don't know all our brands. Okay, so what kind of channel, so how much do you use, say, for example, Google shopping or do you use all social media advertising? Yeah, so we're lucky and fortunate enough to have internal digital agency that will be we also own where we spend about three to four million dollars a month on paid ads. So we have a lot of learnings from working with other clients as well that were able to implement into our own brands. So we do everything from YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Google, the standard channels, I guess. Okay, so what, I mean, it's only particularly innovative you've done. Did you last tell us about? I think making deals, this is probably an interesting concept for people to grasp. People don't like giving away percentage company, but I think in today's marketplace, it makes total sense to give away small percentages of your brands to the biggest influences in the space. Okay, it's worked extremely well for us. So what would you consider to be a big influence in terms of, you know, in terms of, I'll see that again, it all depends on like I can't really give you probably a calculation for that, but it all depends on what stage are you invited to the business? Is it a business story, Jerry? What money is a profitable? Is it at around zero in their investing kind of with you in terms of the risk, risk, reward ratios? But I think anything where the person can generate you at least a million dollars of sales a year, that individual person organically from their channel would be something of interest. Okay. Great. So what do you use? Where do you see kind of social media advertising going? Because obviously, I think people think Facebook is going the way out and TikToks in the way in. How do you see that developing? So what we've learned is that today is more important ever that your creative strategy has to be on point, meaning that Facebook has scribbled away a lot of interests with interest targeting. So what now has to happen, your ad has to generate the interest targeting, that makes sense. So also, then ever you have to have a really in-depth creative strategy where you're looking at customer advertisers, you're looking at their market awareness levels and creating a copy of specific angles and messaging. So it's a lot more work. I think people got away with in the past than not being fantastic marketers because the basic platform was really a lot more on where today, yeah, you really have to be very sophisticated in the way you're creating your ads and messaging. Okay. So how is the changes to iOS effects of doing lots of social marketing? Yeah, it's just made us really focus more on the creative strategy and create a lot more different variables in terms of our creative testing process. You know, before where we might have launching to create 10 different ads to test, we have to do 40 now because we're getting a lot more granular in terms of our testing. Okay. So do your influences, are the main, where's the main, is it still Instagram, is still the main platform that people. We strictly focus on YouTube, to be honest. We focus on, there's a flow and effect like they have Instagram as well, fantastic, they're Facebook, but really it all starts on YouTube because YouTube is an educational base for a lot of people and that seems to be the most affinity with buyers. Okay. So do you create your own content on YouTube? Have you own YouTube channels? We have our own YouTube channels, but where at the stage now we're developing in-house content in terms of educational content. At the moment we've leaned towards influences and allowing them to educate for us, to their audience. Okay. So would they do like a kind of advertorial for you guys? Or is it just, I mean, I don't, would they just have it as part of another video or. A lot of its integrations, some of them are, you know, blocked out individual videos on the actual product brand, but yeah, it's a mixture. And so you do advertising along to do advertising on YouTube or the influence of. Yeah, that's a good one. Okay. So what's the kind of timeline when you're developing a brand? What's your, do you have an access strategy? Do you have a, or what's your kind of timeline for getting it done? How long will it take? Okay, it's a pretty good question. In terms of setting up a brand, it's going to take you probably three to six months at least, I think, from the beginning of the panel, how public care the product is might take you up to a year, like QA took us probably 18 months, for both subsequent took us a year. So yeah, it all depends on how complex and how, how in depth you're going towards the product development. Now, in terms of extra strategy, that's kind of changed during the past, you know, we pause all that money as I mentioned. Now we're developing businesses that we resonate a lot more intrinsically with. So, you know, as long as we're enjoying the business, I don't see why we want to sell it. You should want to sell a business if the business is right. So did you get to hang out with famous footballers? Yeah, we do, yeah. We signed a couple of big clubs and big players, so yeah, we get to, okay. Who have you signed up? I'm going to go Madrid. Okay. We're in talks of one other top EPO club, which I can't mention at the moment, a top four club. And some players like Imitati, chairman, speaking through an unerob other set of moments. Okay, cool. So I don't know much about football. Okay. I'm going to pretend I know what I'm talking about. Okay. I've just got one last question for you. What are you, when you're not thinking about football, you're not thinking about supplementary, not thinking about DC birds. What are you into? Jumping out of planes and experimenting with obscure substances. So how, tell me about, okay, first, there's two things that are very simple and interesting. What are you, a skydiver then? Yeah, yeah. I've been training to do the wings to, wings to drive based jumping at the moment. Oh gosh, based jumping. That's quite nuts. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. There's like nothing I've ever experienced before. A winged, so a wing jumper. Yeah, like wings to, you ever seen the wings to it where you just don't have, God, they're scary. God, they're scary. And the thinking part is, yeah, really, I'm probably by definition of a psycho norm. Okay. So what kind of thing, so what, what, what, is it, is this legal? Is it, yeah, definitely not, definitely legal. But I went on a, someone a personal journey about three years ago where I was at a mastermind in Croatia, one of Ireland, all by on, there's about a hundred entrepreneurs that got invited. And the certain doctor talking about LSD and that presentation, Blumahmind. And I hired him to work with me one on one for the next two years, teach me everything he knew. So that's where my kind journey started. Okay. So what would you recommend to a aspiring psycho norm? That's my, so someone that's never tried anything. Yeah, what's, yeah, would you micro dose or what's your thing? Micro dose, but I think, you know, more values in, in, in the hero doses. But if you're going to start anywhere, it was up to, it's probably start with MDMA. Yeah. And then you'd probably start trying microdOS with LSD and working your way up. But it's like anything, do your research. You're not going to go paragliding without having instructions, jump off a cliff, like read the instructions. Yeah, educate yourself. Don't overdo it. Don't overdo it. Oh, look, even if you're overdo it, like LSD is funny. LSD is zero toxicity and level of body and mind. So you can't overdo it as an LSD. You can just lose yourself for eight hours and not know where you are. Yeah. It's like the things with, you know, alcohol just so much damage in the world. And it makes people sick and people get into fights. And, you know, you take, you take some LSD and, you know, you just, just sit up. And just sit around and wonder at the stars. Yeah. You do anything you want any harm. Yeah, there's a beautiful quote by Terence McKinock. I think I'm probably going to miss quote it and do not do adjusters, but I think you've got to go and said that the love in government doesn't want you to take LSD because. or psychedelics, so you don't jump out of a third story window. I don't want you to take it because what it does is it dissolves certain of the constructions and cultural aid, models of behavior. And if also to your question, everything that you know is potentially incorrect. And this is what they don't want. Yeah. So yeah, each of them. That's interesting. Lucas, been great talking to you. Thanks for sharing your wisdom. Likewise, each time. Thank you. Thanks, bye-bye.