Girl Gang Craft Podcast Episode #86 “Fruitful Biz Ventures”

Phoebe Sherman interview with Jennie Lennick

INTRO
Phoebe Sherman

Welcome to the Girl Gang Craft Podcast where we dive in deep to all things business, wellness, creativity, and activism for artists and entrepreneurs. We talk with impactful female driven companies and founders for an inside look at the entrepreneurial experience where you'll come away with tangible steps to elevate your business. Are you ready? I'm your host, Phoebe Sherman, founder of Girl Gang Craft artist and designer, and marketing obsessed. We're here to learn together how to expand our revenue, implement new organizational techniques, and cultivate best business practices as we work towards creating a life doing what we love. Let's get started.

Hello. Hello. Hey, creatives. Phoebe here today we have Jenny from Jennie Lemons.

Jen Lemons is a colorful accessories and creative lifestyle brand founded by San Francisco based artist Jenny with an i e Lennic in 2015. Her bright shop features an array of food themed and nostalgia inducing products like hair accessories, jewelry and craft kit. She has collaborated with popular brands like Bando, Urban Outfitters and Aerie, and has sold her products in over 400 retailers worldwide. Huge. 400. That's a wild. Jenny was at our first girl craft ever in Oakland, so we've been friends for a bit and it's been so, fruitful and exciting and inspiring to watch her brand grow.

So we'll hop into our interview in just a moment. But of course, we have a couple of housekeeping things to tell you. One, you can call Phoebe up, call Girl Gang Craft up our phone number is (413) 961-0855. No one's going to answer that line for you, which sometimes we love. Just leave a voicemail or a question you have. Maybe it's about wholesale, or maybe it's about taxes. Maybe it's about time management. Maybe it's a craft fair question. We're going to answer all of them. So go ahead and leave a voicemail and we'll insert them into our podcast episodes.
At this time, this podcast goes live. We have some events on the horizon. So it’s like a couple of days to our Providence event, that's June 8th at the Waterfire Art center, we have a food truck, we have frozen lemonade, we have PVDonuts, we have a DJ, a bar, and 50 some forward vendors. So that's gonna be a good time. That is a ticketed event. It is $5 presale and $10 at the door. Children 12 and under are free. Go ahead, reserve your ticket now. You can go to Gog and craft com slash events. And that link is right for you. And we can include it in the show notes as well. Then we've got our Salem events June 22nd and July 27th. And then we've got our Sacramento which is August 8th. Guys, I don't know how I've memorized all these dates, but I have. I'm a calendar girlie, but also the calendar exists in my head.
Also, we have announced two new events. We have a Sacramento December 14th and that is at the Galleria Library or the Library Galleria. It's a beautiful building. It's a library. It's a venue. We're excited to be there bringing our Sacramento magic to the winter. And then we've also announced a Malden event and that's really exciting. Some folks from the city of Malden are bringing us in. They want us to bring our exciting, magical vibes and curated fem craft owners, creative small business owners to Malden. So that's really exciting. So the senior center, which is cool, is also a teen center and it's like, we love a community center that's multi-purpose and it's really pretty in there too. And it's also right next to the T. So we love it. I think that is it for now. Call us up. Listen to this episode.

Oh, we've got a coupon code for you of course. You can use GGC for 15% off at JennyLemons. com, so make sure you go and get one of her cute food accessories. I personally have the lemon one, which is like a medium clip. And then I have the grapefruit which is a bigger clip. Also, my husband Matt, who has a couple over had two. We have the hot dog hat and the banana hat. I think my sister and my husband and I have two so big fans of Jenny Lemons. I also have some of our OG products, like some of our shirts, and we'll be talking about a little bit of that evolution in the episode, so let's get into it.

Hello creatives. Welcome back to Girl Gang Craft the Podcast. Today we have Jennie from Jenny Lemons on the podcast. Hi Jennie. Welcome.

Jennie
Hi. Thanks for having me.

Phoebe
Thanks for being here. So Jennie and I go way back. Jennie was at the first GGC ever and we met. I mean, probably at like Renegades or something.

Jennie
Was I at the first one? I can't believe it.

Phoebe
Yeah, the first or maybe the second one. I feel like the first one I feel like you were there at both both the lucky ones. And we've been connected. And Jenny has an amazing, I want to say, like a food based apparel and accessories business. Is that a proper terminology?

Jennie
Yeah, yeah. Food themed maybe.

Phoebe
Yeah, maybe it's not made out of food. It's visual representations of food. And it's been fun to grow our business alongside each other and watch what all her turns and pivots and changes. And I'm excited to have you here to talk about it.

Jennie
Thank you. I'm super excited to be here. And it's so nice to see you.

Phoebe
It’s so nice to see you. So yeah. Jennie, tell us what it is. Tell us about your food themed business.

Jennie
Okay, so Jenny Lemons is in. Well, it's our ninth year of business, which is kind of crazy. Next year is our ten year, and it's going to be really fun. But it started as an extension of my art practice. So I'm originally from Minnesota, and I moved to California to go to graduate school at the San Francisco Art Institute, and I got an MFA in painting there. And while I was at SFAI, I did my thesis project about traditional craft, like sort of intersecting with high art. And part of that traditional craft is like this, like tradition of food and women and preparing meals for our families. And like the traditional dishes that each family has and what that looks like. When I was in school, it was like ceramic sculpture of food. I did like paintings of meals and people made out of food, and it was like really arty, conceptual and like, not super accessible to people. After I graduated, I spent a couple of years in the fine art world working at art galleries. I had an artist residency in San Francisco at this like, wonderful nonprofit called Root Division. and while I was there, I like showing my work all the time. I was in tons of shows at different galleries and museums, and while that felt successful to me, I never sold anything. I was like, so broke the like, poster child of starving artist, you know? And it wasn't until a show that I did in 2014, which I feel this is like the birth of Jenny Lemons, where I created a series of artwork. It was called Cheeses of France. The Cheeses of France. Okay, so that's where I made this clothing and jewelry. I made a zine and some like small watercolor drawings of various cheeses from France. And this show sold out. All of a sudden I hung up like shirts and hand drawn clothing on the walls like paintings. And people bought them. And I thought, oh, maybe people don't want me to make paintings. Maybe people want me to make things for them to buy. Quickly after that, I started doing Renegade Craft Fair and Girl Gang Craft Fair and West Coast craft and so many, so many craft fairs. I was out there like every weekend at various shows, farmers markets, whatever I'm showing my artwork. And at that time I was mostly making handmade clothing. And yeah, I'm just telling you the story of my business. Coming to this day.

Phoebe
I feel like some of the stuff I didn't hear so personally this is great

Jennie
Yeah. So I was making my clothing and it was getting like really intense. It was going well, and I was working as a preschool teacher and teaching art classes in the evening to support the start of my new business. And I did that from 2014 to 2017. And in 2017, I quit my full time job to go into Jenny Lemons full time. So 2017 was like an incredible year. I made so much clothes. It was crazy, just like at my sewing machine all the time until I developed a repetitive stress injury which helped me ask for help. So I started working with a factory at that time to help manufacture my clothing, and it was going like, really, really well. And that was until the summer of 2017. I had gotten like three wholesale accounts, like I was supporting myself with my business. And then I got the eviction notice at my studio, which is a very common story in San Francisco of artists getting displaced for development in the city. That's what led me to look for new space, and that's how I founded my shop in November 2017. So 2017 was huge. Quit my day job and started a shop. I opened up my first retail location in SF in the Mission District, and it was a beautiful little community space that I ran for six years. It served as a place to like, sell my own products, but I also curated the work of other artists. We had art shows and art classes, and it was like a just a beautiful.

Phoebe
That was 2017. That's wild. Okay.

Jennie
Yeah, yeah, it was great and we did really well from 2017 till 2020. And of course, and yeah, 2020 was like this year where I just pivoted like crazy. I started teaching online art classes all the time, and 2020 was actually like really, really good for us because everyone went online. They're like super into supporting small business, like really, really into it. So I was hopeful, as the pandemic ended, that it would continue that way, but it didn't, unfortunately. So I limped along for three more years and then ended up closing my shop in November last year, 2023. So now I work from home and I design hair accessories primarily, and some other accessories all based on food. And yeah, that's it. long tale

Phoebe
I love it. No, it's great. And 2017 just seemed so early because that was our first event too. You must have had the store during those first events. You had just like open that.

Jennie
Yeah, I got the lease in November 2017, November 1st. Okay. and I took December. I was like kind of open. I had my grand opening party in March, but we had been open for like five months, so I was like a little open.

Phoebe
Okay, I want to talk about the store a little bit, because I do think that's important for folks who are a interested in opening a spot and be also interested in why you didn't want to have the spot anymore. But I think one of the ways that you made it work so well is you had this community service based component right? You had folks come into the store for workshops and gatherings, and then you also did corporate classes, right?

Jennie
Yes. I felt like having the store door was like avenue for me to express all of my interests and all of my different like, facets of business that I wanted to do. So I sold my own products. Director, consumer there. I also curated products from other makers. At one point we had like 250 makers in the shop and then, yeah, doing the art classes. So the makers in the shop, we also offered them a place to teach art classes, and we had a really fun artist of the month series of workshops, which were free or low cost workshops for the community to come in and meet the artists and make something and have a drink and just hang out with their neighbors. So super fun. And yeah, the corporate events, that was a lot of work, but that really helped me, had a lot of great relationships with all of the tech companies in San Francisco that would either come into our space for like a watercolor teambuilding workshop, or we would go to them or it would be virtual.

Phoebe
Yeah. How did you get in touch with some of these tech companies to teach for them? Because I just think this is such a good avenue for so many craft based folks to I mean, corporations have money, period. I encourage folks listening if you want to sort of pop into the teaching space, like corporations are great clients and they have money, and they have money literally set aside for these sort of teambuilding activities. How did you sort of like have that pitching method or make those connections?

Jennie
It first just really organic. People who had come into my shop and take a class or like us and they're like, hey, I work for Apple and, my team does it simple activities. Would you do that? So I was like, yes. And I would like make sure to get their information and like email them and follow up. My list just grew to kind of doing that to start after the team build, I would always email them and ask them to write a review on Yelp or on Google Business. So that helped our SEO and so on. Searching team build San Francisco boom. Here I come up with all these reviews. I also used to, I don't know if they exist anymore. There's like platforms that you can sign up for that will connect you directly with teams, like stuff like I use a company called A local to me book classes, Eventbrite you could use too that was really helpful. And as it became more of like a thing, I was trying to think like the people running the experience managers or whoever are running these things, like, what do they get? They get quarterly. They're going to have a team build for their teams. You better believe every quarter I was emailing them with my updated offerings of classes, especially changing them just ever so slightly. I have a watercolor class now I have a Valentine's Day watercolor class. They're really busy and they don't want to spend all their time searching on the internet for different places to go. So if you are proactively reaching out to your warm leads, people who are interested in you, they're probably going to sign up with you versus somebody else. So that worked really well. I just made like an email list in Klaviyo all of my team built clients and emailed them quarterly.

Phoebe
Yeah, that's super smart. Just saying top of mind with those people and yeah, what they need from you and landing in their inbox. That's great. Let's talk about your apparel a little bit too, because I know firsthand that that sort of went through a transformation. So you were making clothing yourself. Then you got a factory. And then I remember the moment when you were like, I'm not going to make clothing anymore, and I'm just going to get blanks again. And then you were done with clothing. So can you tell us a little bit about that? Kind of like those stages.

Jennie
I love clothes, I love indie designers. I am like I'm wearing metal studios, one of my favorite brands. I love clothing and I love to be in that sphere. But I really also love accessibility and I am unable to have a size inclusive brand. I really tried, I went up to 4X, but the minimums are too high to work with these factories for a small designer that's trying stuff out, it just became financially and emotionally too taxing on me to continue having clothing. The brands that can do it. I really applaud them and do it well. Brands like New Works or Metal Studios, they've got it down. It's awesome. But I couldn't. And speaking of inclusivity, like I really wanted to have a product. I was always jealous of accessories brands ang jewelry brands. I was like, oh, look at you. You don't have to have all these weird exercises that no one is going to buy. You just get to have your one thing and that's it. And I was always jealous, and I was like, oh, why didn't I just do that? I shifted away from clothing completely. I will not be launching another collection. And I'm leaning heavily into accessories, mainly hair accessories, 99% hair accessories. But then I also just like love to play around with other things too. So like jewelry and home goods and stickers and stuff like that.

Phoebe
Matt has two of your hats. I think you already know that. My husband, he has the banana hat and I think you got it for his sister also. And what was the new one that we just got? We got the hot dog hat.

Jennie
Yes.

Phoebe
He loves that. It's such a great color. The hot dog hat too. It's just so All-American like it's great.

Jennie
Yeah, yeah. And that's why I love accessories. And I love that I kind of stumbled into this process where I start out all of my watercolor drawings. I've been working on some stuff I'll show you for the audio people. I'm holding up a grid of tiny paintings. I paint about 25/30 little versions of paintings on paper, and that's how I start my designs. And then I kind of like land on which ones I like, draw them digitally, and then I have whatever, a hot dog design, and I could make that hot dog into a hair claw, a hat, a sticker, other secret things that are coming out of the future. So it's really fun. It's just so fun to let my designs kind of become other things and be inclusive.

Phoebe
Okay, so I want to talk more about the accessories and sort of like your manufacturing process. And also we're going to dive into wholesale because you have such an amazing wholesale practice. But going back to the moment when you knew the store wasn't working, what did that look like? How did you feel supported in that transition and how is it going now?

Jennie
I had known the store wasn't working for a while because we were not profitable. The operating expenses of my shop were very high, about $14,000 a month just to have lights on. It would cost $14,000.

Phoebe
And that's not including staff.

Jennie
That includes staff, that staff rent everything $14,000 just to be there. So that means if I'm selling mostly other people's products in my shop, it's a 50% profit margin. Most makers know this. It's like that's the keystone profit margin just to keep the lights on. I need to sell $28,000 worth of stuff, $28,000 for the stuff that's to make $0 that we accept. Right. And most months we were making about $20,000 in the store. So I was a negative money every single month. It just wasn't making any sense. And I was limping along for a while because all of my other many sales channels, which I'm happy to talk about, were uplifting the store, which is the money set, but it was a place where we stored all of our products and we did all of our shipping. It's just here and maybe it loses a little money, but it's okay because we need an office. But then in May last year, we moved to a fulfillment center. Our wholesale business was getting too big for us to accommodate in the back room of our tiny little shop. It was just too stressful. So we moved to a fulfillment center and all of a sudden the shop, its only function was to be a shop and it wasn't cutting it. Shortly after we moved to the fulfillment center, my longest employee who worked at the shop put in her notice and I was like, I don't want to find another person. I don't want to hire another person. I don't want to do this. And that's kind of when I knew I was like, this part of my life is ending and it's time to move on. It's not that I didn't try. I got a grant from the city of San Francisco to remodel my shop. I had hired sign painters to come out. I painted the inside of the shop. We had some really fun collaborative parties. And I know you interviewed Shitty Craft Club like she came for a book signing. We did all this stuff and it just wasn't cutting it month after month. And that's when I decided that it was time to go.

Phoebe
This fulfillment center. So that means that you're not shipping off products, you're paying someone else to do it, and that's like their job.

Jennie
Yeah. So essentially what it is, we're in a fulfillment center in Brisbane, California. So right next to San Francisco. So it's only ten minute drive from our house. And yeah, they store all of our products for us and they ship all of our orders.

Phoebe
Both wholesale and online. Yeah.
Jennie Absolute game changer. Because we don't have to have a physical location to store our products anymore. They store it for us, they package it, they ship it. It's great. Sorry about it. Yeah. And so do you ever go there or is that just like fully on its own?

Jennie
I don't go there very often. We're going to talk about my team now. But my husband and I are the two main employees of Jenny Lemons. I work on all marketing and design. And then, like the CEO of the business, and he's the COO if we're going to use a C-Suite terms. So he does all operations. So he's like our accounts manager for wholesale. He does all customer service, which is something I want to outsource. And he is the liaison with the fulfillment center. So he's- Every order that this place at Jennylemons.com, my sweet husband sees and he's making sure that it's flowing through to the fulfillment center and getting where it needs to go.

Phoebe
And so when did he start working for Jenny Lemons?

Jennie
He started when our daughter was one, two years ago, because she's three.

Phoebe
Yeah. That's exciting. I didn't know about. Can we ask what he was doing before and like how that transition happened?

Jennie
He was an art handler. Basically, he worked in rich people's homes, hanging their paintings. He also worked in art galleries, installing art shows. It was a really fun job, and he worked with his friends, but it kind of came to a point where I like, needed more help with my business, and I was kind of feeling like I was drowning. And we had a one year old daughter. She wanted to be with her more because often at his job, he'd have to work until like 7 p.m. and she's in bed when he gets home. I was like, just work with me. Come on. I had to hire someone anyways, so he left and at first he was the shipping boy in the back of the shop for about a year, and then we moved to the filament center.

Phoebe
That's really exciting.

Jennie
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a family business.

Phoebe
I love it.

BREAK

Are you on Faire? Faire is a marketplace to connect product based businesses with retailers. Think of it as like an Etsy, but for stores. This is a great way to get your product in front of retailers and expand your revenue. Please make sure your products are priced accordingly for those margins. Wholesale is 50% off people and fair takes 15% off the first order and 10% off all return orders. Apply now at faire.com/apply/girlgangcraft so that's F A I R E .com slash apply slash girl gang craft.

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Phoebe
Okay, let's talk about I kind of want to talk about manufacturing, and then we can talk about like how you're getting your items in front of the people of the world.

Jennie
Yeah.

Phoebe
Okay. I would love to hear a little bit about your process you talked about, and you showed us your little watercolors. And that'll be on the YouTube video for you all listening if you allow that, maybe.

Jennie
Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Phoebe
Those are the secret mushrooms. I would love to hear a little bit about start to finish. We've been talking about manufacturing a little bit on the podcast with various guests. I'm in the middle of some manufacturing issues right now, so I have some personal questions. I think a lot of folks listening, the step from making things yourself to manufacturing or getting help on part of the product is a big leap for people to make. So I don't know if you have any sort of things that you want to share about your process or like. Any tips to make that feel a little bit easier for folks?

Jennie
Yeah, it is extremely emotional. I remember weeping when I was like, I was diagnosed with cubicle tunnel syndrome. It's like carpal tunnel, but it comes from my elbow and it was from sewing because I was hand painting and hand block printing all of my clothing and then hand sewing it. So just doing that repetitive stress, my hand went completely numb and I was like, what am I going to do? I own the means of my production. How am I supposed to make things if I can't make things, how am I supposed to make money? I started really slowly and that is something you can do too. I started with I would still hand paint and hand block print all of my fabrics, and then at the time in San Francisco, there was actually a tiny factory across the street from my studio. I couldn't even believe it, that I would, like, carry my cut pieces of my panels. They're called over and then they would sew them for me. They sold like 15 shirts or something like that, and I was like, this is incredible. You can start slow. They're probably where you live. Depending on what you're doing, there are people that can help you with small parts of it. But as you're starting to scale up what I look for whenever I want to try a new product, right now I really want to make share socks. I probably shouldn't talk about my secret products, but like, I really want you. How cute would Jenny Lemon's sheer socks be? They would be so cute. I'm interviewing several manufacturers and you can find them from lots of different sources. You could just Google them. You could search if you want to be USA made, USA Made sock manufacturer, you could ask people sometimes like some makers are really open with their sources, and you can kind of tell by following them on Instagram and seeing how they are. And I interview and I look for factories that have fair practices that I believe in and I support certifications or whatever. Do your due diligence. Look for factories that have been around for a few years. Oh, you don't want anyone that's just suddenly starting today and look for factories that will make a sample for you. It is worth it. Please make samples and smaller minimums like around 100 might feel like a lot, but that's really low. A lot of factors like minimum 10,000 and that's just like so it it didn't accessible to me. So yeah, that's what I look for fair practices and small minimums and has been in business for a while with some reviews.

Phoebe
Okay. The sample thing, I'm in some sample processes for a couple things. Do you have to pay every time they make a change to a sample?
Jennie
It depends on the factory. Usually you don't. Usually you don't.

Phoebe
Because this is new to me also, and I feel like I mean, yeah, it was sort of a redesign a little bit, but I don't know, I feel like I've gotten charged twice for re samples. I don't know.

Jennie
I know usually it depends on the factory, often the sample. I'm working on redesigning my hot dog beaded pouch. Okay, I'm not happy with my factories. I'm shopping new factories and it's like it's going to be expensive. But I know that this is going to be like, you look at your data, what products are working and decide if the investment is going to be worth it. But yeah, samples can be a pain. And also like it's also on the designer, like try to give them as much information as possible at the first time. The first time you submit your design, share your sizes, share your Pantone colors. If you can share pictures of other things, you want it to look like. A lot of the factories I work with are in Asia, so I'm like, I'm working with people who's English as their second language, or they don't even know English that well. So I really am trying to be as thorough as possible. Don't allow any reading between the lines.

Phoebe
Yeah, I think that's great advice. And then are you getting samples sent to you or are you trusting videos?

Jennie
I will trust videos, but I used to. But now I get everything sent to me because as a real designer, actually, I've been doing this flying by the seat of my pants for ten years. I'm sure you can totally relate where you're just like, oh, this is cool. Yeah, like, I'll just try this. I'm like figuring it out as I go along, but I'm like, oh, wow. This reasons why you get samples sent to you. I get my samples sent to me so that I can make content with them so that by the time that they're here and ready to launch, I'm ready to go. My listings are ready. I've sent into the content creators that I work with to do user generated content. I have weighed them. I have measured them. I've written my descriptions. I'm good to go. So the second the package gets here, I might do one little unboxing video and then boom, we're ready. We're off to the races. Plus I can also again, I'm like, we're going to talk about my team. But like I'm working with a PR agency and I just hired a sales rep. So they need to know everything the next six months, having those samples, at least one set for you to have pictures and things is so, so valuable.

Phoebe
Yeah, that's really smart. Very smart.

Jennie
I also I was like, one’s fine, the video is fine. Like it's going to take too long to get these samples to do this stuff. But it does add like, yeah, it might add a week, but that what can you do in that week to be able to be ready to go the second when this huge investment arrives and not have to wait any longer. It's like so valuable. And to get all this buzz, Elizabeth from the Peach Fuzz is a friend of mine, and I think that what she does is so amazing. Like she will just talk about her products for like a month before it's coming. Like teasing it and teasing it and teasing it and teasing that it's here and everyone's ready and they know about it because they already know it's coming.

Phoebe
Yeah. That's smart, I love that. That's something I didn't even think about. I'm like looking at samples to have it. But great love it. How are you getting your accessories in front of let's do people first and then we can move to wholesale.

Jennie
As my business has simplified plan meaning like not having the store, not doing workshops routine builds anymore, like really focusing. I want to just say like when I close my shop. Also, the reason I close my shop is because I have a three year old daughter and I give her so much and I was having a hard time also giving myself to the shop and to just splitting myself in that way. In that process, I didn't have any room for my art anymore. When I closed my shop, I made a conscious decision to focus on my art and my designs only. That has like, allowed me to really hone in on exactly what my vision is and share it with other people. So I'm getting my stuff in front of other people. I'm excited to share my drawings, and I'm excited to share my product because they're mine and I got to make them. And that's like, so fun. Getting to your question, but I designed the products and I am head of marketing for my business, so we use social media. Of course, I also have a PR agency, and I have recently started an affiliate program, which has been really cool. With social media. I work with a team of content creators that help me create content, because I'm 37 years old and I do not like to make TikToks, I do make them, but I can do about I do them and I just say, no, it's not what I like. Yeah, they're based in the East Bay, so what they do is they will create really beautiful. Well, I should say it's beautiful. It's like just fun. Like they work mainly with CPGs or consumer packaged goods, food companies like tinned fish or sodas or whatever. So it's been a really great match to work with them because since my business is like almost a food based business, they like style my stuff like food and take really cool photos. They also make reels with their content creators. And then what I do is I get all of that, and then I also will make reels and take pictures and do like the behind the scenes things. So I schedule out our Instagram and I write all the captions for it. And then I have a virtual assistant who will take everything I've written for Instagram and then remix it, and we post it on every other social media channel. So like Pinterest, even LinkedIn, every week we do a LinkedIn post, YouTube shorts, TikTok. Is there anything else oh Facebook that that just automatically happens. Yeah so that's our social media strategy. I also have a newsletter that I write weekly and that is based on like whatever my weekly theme is. I kind of do like content pillars and themes. Whatever the theme is for the week, I'll send out a weekly newsletter and then I have a PR agency.

Phoebe
You can you give us an example of your weekly themes? I think that's helpful for sure.

Jennie
People. Yeah it is. Yeah. On Mondays I have Marketing Mondays, so I spend a few hours on Mondays thinking about the week and planning out what I'm going to talk about and social media. Sometimes it will be a launch, new products coming, sometimes it will be a sale. That's easy. I try to have not super often sales, but things that make sense right in the middle of a sale right now because it was National Picnic Day. So I'm like, oh, I have a sale. It could be a sale. It could be a launch. If you have nothing like that, you're like, you can look at what's on the calendar for that week, Earth day. I did several pieces about Earth Day. You could do bestsellers. My brand. I could do a week about strawberries, like, here's a strawberry product, here's whatever. Like every piece of content I'm creating is about strawberries. And then for my email newsletter list, I would have Product spotlight strawberry hair clips check out. Check out my hair clips.My newsletters are never anything really new. That's kind of just like an Instagram whatever. Like the week's best Instagram post that I think is going to hit the most is what will kind of go to my newsletter. It's really pretty easy. I spend about 2 to 3 hours a week planning, and then I just do my daily posting and everything that's already been planned and it's very nice.

Phoebe
Okay. And then you mentioned PR did I make up that you are working with Wolf PR?

Jennie
I'm working with Wolf PR yeah, I met from you. Okay. Thanks for doing okay. Yeah. Wolf PR so they pitch my brand to publications and that's been great. Really cool to BuzzFeed's like loves Jenny Lemons. They're like the hot dog hair claw’s on BuzzFeed. Again I'm like, okay, cool. Getting on the today show. That was with the help of the PR agency. We were on the Today show in March. It's been really cool. It's just like, kind of makes my brand seem legit, you know, that social proof is so important and like, figuring out, like, hiring a PR agency is like really expensive. And it took nine years of being in business to hire a PR agency to be ready for that. But like any way you can get more social proof, which means reviews, user generated content sort of stuff. If you have a friend that works in a magazine, it really helps.

Phoebe
Okay, let's talk wholesale. You have a very successful wholesale business. I feel like I see your stuff everywhere. I was just in Portsmouth this weekend and I was like, okay, Jenny Lemons over here on the East Coast. Tell us what that looks like.

Jennie
My method is very, very old school and it's worked really well, like really, really well. So what I do and I've been doing this since 2017 really when I started my shop, when I went full time, I started this process of I would find shops that I thought were good fit for my brand, actual good fit. It's not just random, not just any shop. I would get the email of the buyer of the shop, and then I would reach out to them with a simple email saying hi, I'm Jenny, very simple. I'm a double agent. I had a shop and I was the buyer. So I know what these people are getting. They get emailed every single day. I'm still getting emails from people asking to be in my shop and I'm like, the shop's closed. It's been closed for six months. These people are getting emails every day. Make it short, make it sweet, you know? Hi, I'm Jenny, I own a food themed hair accessories business out of San Francisco. One line about your hair accessories. It could be we were just featured in BuzzFeed or they're made from cellulose acetate, earth friendly material, whatever. I have a bullet list, like we're women owned, we're ethically sourced, blah blah blah. I include a link to my catalog as well as my fair link. You always have to include your family. Now if you're using fair and then I just include like 2 to 3 small pictures. I create my emails in Gmail and I save them as templates in Gmail. Don't have to pay for that, but I do pay for a program called Boomerang, which kind of like shows up in Gmail, but I pay for the version of it, the real version of it, and what it does is. So I'll send it out to my buyer in one week. The email comes back to my inbox. I program that and that is my trigger to send out my follow up email. The follow up email is even shorter than the first one. Hi Jenny, just checking in. Did you have a chance to check out my line? Here's my Faire link. Let me know if you have questions. Then I boomerang it back again in one week where I will send out my final email. Hi, just checking in one more time seeing if you're interested. Let me know if you have any questions. Here's that link again. Okay, bye. That's it. I leave them alone for six months and then I start over again. Now I don't do it anymore. My virtual assistant does this, but she has like a spreadsheet where she tracks it all like reached out, didn't get a response, reached back out in six months, blah blah. And it will work. It works like I'm about a 10% conversion rate, so one of ten shops will buy something because you are doing the due diligence of reaching out to these shops. Specifically, I think a good goal for people is to find 30 shops a month. I know that sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. Great ways to find shops is to look at the stockist page of your competitors, or people who make very similar products to you, and then get on faire and eventually the ball just starts rolling. We're in over 450 shops around the world and counting. I don't even know. I mean, like every time I look it's another 25, another 30. We could be in 500 right now, but it's crazy. But what happens is these shops, they are so invested in your brand, but they're going to start posting about your brand too. When I was a shop, I followed all the shops I liked and I was like, oh, cool. Like Rare Device in San Francisco's carrying these gummies. I'm on a different part of town. I should check them out. They've already vetted them for me. So like it creates more marketing opportunities for you organically, and you're getting paid to get free marketing, like you're getting paid for your product and they are marketing it for you. It's very cool.

Phoebe
Are you having everyone purchase through your faire link, or are you doing any invoices for folks?

Jennie
I will do invoices if they're not on Faire. We have retailers in Japan and Thailand, Korea that are not on faire yet because faire’s not available. I mostly did fair. Mostly everyone is on faire. As I mentioned, we just hired sales reps to start working with us because it's getting too big for us to handle on its own, and now we're just kind of like auto piloting it. My VA reaches out to wholesale clients, potential wholesale clients, but like we need that more personal touch, I think. So our sales reps are going to start doing it and they will invoice everybody.

Phoebe
So they'll be off the faire program.

Jennie
Probably it's a whole other podcast to talk about sales reps in the faire day and age. They have their own faire direct link that they use so that if they're going to a retailer and showing the price of retail, I could still order through faire, but the rep is really doing the groundwork of going in and contacting the buyers and showing samples and doing all that stuff so they can get their commission.

Phoebe
Fascinating. I mean, that's so. Yeah. Congratulations. How are you handling inventory, then? How is this informing your inventory? How are you deciding how much to order? What does that look like?

Jennie
I work with a wonderful person named Amanda. She has an amazing podcast called Clothes Horse. Have you heard of her Phoene? It's really good. She's amazing. So she is a business consultant for me and she specializes in OTB, which is, buying process. It's a formula essentially. So what she will do is she will look at my past inventory and like, my sales and be like, whoa, you're like hot dog hair claw you're selling like 500 units a month. And traditionally, your February is bigger than your January. So I anticipate that you're going to need 750 hot dog hair claws for January, so you better get ordering. She knows my lead times and she'll tell me exactly what to order so that I don't run into sellouts, which I still do. And that was a huge problem last year as my business started ramping up and really growing exponentially. We were up over 1,000% in wholesale last year. We made like $50,000 in 2022 and wholesale to $500,000 in 2023 in wholesale. It was crazy and like we couldn't keep up with it. So I feel like we're good now. But I'm sure there are apps and things that you could use to help you forecast your inventory, but I use it like a real old school person to do math problems for me. We have a lot of SKUs. We have about 300 SKUs now. It's a little bit hard to like watch every single thing, but if you have just a few SKUs, you can kind of see, you can kind of do that math problem yourself. I sold 100 of them this month, but March is better than February, so I'm going to make sure I have 150 ready to go.

Phoebe
Really helpful.

Jennie Yeah.

Phoebe
Okay. I don't know. What else do you want to share with us? What sort of advice do you want to leave us with?

Jennie
Can I tell you about who's on my team? Yeah, yeah. So when I opened my shop, I had like nine employees at one time. I was like, oh my god, this is too many employees. And now it's just me and my husband. But we have many people that also help us. But it's nice just to have like two main people working in the business and making all the decisions. I also have a virtual assistant who works as a contractor that I found through Upwork, which was amazing, and she's based in New York. She's awesome, I love her. We have our fulfillment center, which is really like a team of ten guys shipping out our orders. My content creators. I also work with Amanda, my who helps with my buying coach, and I have a consultant, my friend Candace, who helps navigate paid ads because I am not able to understand them.

Phoebe
Are you doing Google and social media ads?

Jennie
Yeah, Facebook and Meta and Google and Shop, which is interesting.

Phoebe
I don't know that.

Jennie
Shopify shop app.

Phoebe
Okay.

Jennie
I have a graphic designer that helps occasionally with like packaging design. My husband and I mainly, and this like team of experts really that help us. Oh, and like of course my bookkeeper and my accountant. And that's been something that's been really helpful for me having a home based small business instead of hiring employees that I have to find things for them to do and instead to hire other small businesses to work as consultants or agencies that are like true experts in their fields to help me grow. I feel like that is really, really helps. Like when I was running my shop, I spent a lot of time training people on to these jobs that I wanted them to do without me really being an expert in that job. So yeah, it can be like really scary to hire a professional to help you. But yeah, like with programs like Upwork or even like on Instagram, as you're following other like my friend Amanda, she has a podcast. I followed her and I found out about her from another small business owner reaching out to people and seeing like, where's the hole in my business? And what do you guys do to help me move forward? That's been really great. I love all of the different small businesses that we support with my social distance.

Phoebe
I love it so much and I think there's so much value in like finding someone who actually knows what they're doing. I think that's great.

Jennie
It's just like outsourcing the production. It's the same thing. It's like, I don't know, I mean, like I took so many business classes I've listened to, like so many podcasts and read all these business books. But like, I'm not an expert in making social media content. I read an expert in meta ads. Are you kidding me? I don't want to do these books, so like finding someone that can help you is really amazing. And now with technology just advancing all the time, there's so many apps and things that you also can use that will like make your life a lot easier. And I will always sign up for another app to help me with some process.

Phoebe
And also I'm an app person too. But like also if you have experts too, it's their job to understand these new apps and technology is always changing too. It's so hard for us to keep up with all of the tech, and to have someone who's specialized in figuring all that stuff out for us and reporting back that we trust is everything.

Jennie
Yeah. And I mean, there's also like little things like asking specifically with production. I mean, we've had a lot of problems with our hair accessories for when we get the hair accessories delivered to us, and they wouldn't have a hang tag on them. The girls working in my shop would sit there all day and hi little hanging tags. Each hair clock they like weren't happy about it because it sucked and it was like so tedious. I was like, I'm just going to ask the factory if they offer that, because this is like a real pain point for me. And the factory is like, oh, absolutely. And the cost will be $0.02 a hang tag. And I was like $0.02. Like, are you kidding me? This is incredible. You just saved my team. You've seen my sanity. Like they can do something else. So like and then like, along the same lines of that story in our warehousing, each product needs to be barcoded so that the guys who are picking our hair clothes for our packages know exactly which one, because I mean, the fulfillment center we work with works with like rehabilitated men that are in like a substance abuse program. And a lot of these guys, I don't know them very well, but I assume most of them aren’t like super into women's hair accessories, basically like the mini hot dog and the regular size hot dogs. They might just see hot dog and grab it and it's wrong. So they have to have a barcode on them so they can check. We were having to physically put these barcodes on each and every one, and I just asked the factory, would you mind barcoding these for me? And they're like, no problem. That's complimentary. What? We were spending hundreds of dollars paying these guys to barcode them for us. And we just save so much time and money. Don't be afraid to ask the people you're already working with if they can help you with these things as well.

Phoebe
That's great advice.

Jennie
Yeah.

Phoebe
Okay. Is that what you want to end on, or do you have any last little nuggets of wisdom you want to bestow on us?

Jennie
I guess the one thing that I want to say is I kind of glazed over it, but like putting the focus on, I assume, most of your listeners, because I know you and what you do are small business owners and makers and kind of think about why you're in business and if something you are doing, you don't like doing it either it's really super hard or you're doing it and you're not sure why you're doing it, or you're making this thing and people don't like it, but they like this other thing. Really listen to yourself and do the things that you love and make you the most happy. Because you're otherwise go work for somebody else. You're working for yourself, and you should enjoy what you're doing. Every moment is going to be the most fun, but at the end of the day, if you're making a product that you don't like or you're working with someone you don't like, or you're not enjoying your production partners, you can find another one. And that's okay. So yeah, it's been a lot of fun exploring that for myself. And instead of like helping other artists make their work, I like to actually make my work and to be an artist again. That's been really amazing for my family and for me.

Phoebe
Where can we find your amazing hair accessories and more?

Jennie
Well, Jennylemons.com. We also have an Etsy shop and everything's on Etsy. You can find us on Faire if you're a retailer. Instagram TikTok, Jenny_lemons. I've been in business so long, so I have Jenny Lemon's username for everywhere except for TikTok. But yeah.
Phoebe
Well, thank you so much Jenny. This has been so helpful to myself and to everyone listening.

Jennie
Thanks Phoebe. Great to see you and talk to you.

OUTRO

Phoebe
Thank you so much for listening to the Girl Gang Craft Podcast. Head to Girlgangcraft.com/podcast for shownotes and more. See you next time.