#425 – Creating a Canine Empire: Innovative Strategies for Growing a Pet Brand with Julie Napolitano

#425 - Creating a Canine Empire: Innovative Strategies for Growing a Pet Brand with Julie Napolitano Kevin King: Welcome to episode 425 of the AM PM Podcast. My guest this week is Julie Napolitano. Julie is a huge pet lover and has a dog brand that she's been doing for five years. So we discuss the challenges of actually competing in the pet space. What it took for her to get to where she's at. And some very interesting ways she's actually financed this business. Some ways that are not talked about a whole lot. And then also the advantages of actually participating in like the Market Master's think tank. I think you'll get a lot of value from this episode, some actionable tactics. So enjoy my talk with Julie. Unknown Speaker: Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast. Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast, where we explore opportunities in e-commerce, covers. Julie Napolitano: We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Unknown Speaker: Plus, this is the podcast where money never sleeps. Working around the clock in the AM and the PM. Are you ready for today's episode? I said, are you ready? Let's do this. Let's do this. Here's your host, Kevin King. Kevin King: Julie Napolitano, how are you doing? Good to have you on the AM-PM Podcast. Julie Napolitano: Thanks for having me, Kevin. Nice to see you. Kevin King: Nice to see you again. I think we met in, I think for the first time, where was it, in Japan, right? Julie Napolitano: Yeah, at Gary's Seven Figure Seller Summit in Okinawa. Kevin King: We're a handful of people that decided to actually go to Japan for a small little Japanese event in Okinawa. I mean, you're based in the East Coast of the US. What made you decide, was Japan just something that, hey, I've always wanted to go to Japan, this is a good excuse? Or were you looking to expand to Japan at the time? And what was the reason for taking that time and money to head over there? Julie Napolitano: So the opportunity to expand into Japan sounded really interesting. So this was Pat last April, but I was still quite new to Amazon. I had only launched in December 2022. So for me, it was really an opportunity to get into the room with a bunch of sellers who've done this a lot longer than I have, you know, whether it's Japan or talking US or other markets, just sounded like an amazing opportunity in a really intimate environment to kind of network and get to know people and understand how everybody that's actually figured it out is getting it done. Kevin King: What did you get different from it than what you expected? Julie Napolitano: It's all about the relationships and that's what you get at these really small intimate events that you just don't get at these giant conferences where you're meeting dozens of people in a day. And that, you know, I think just definitely surpassed any expectation I had going in. Like I imagined I'm going to show up in a conference room in Japan with a notebook, you know, take a lot of notes, learn a lot of things, meet some cool people. But the relationships that you build when you're in a small setting with people just like one-on-one for a couple of days or a week, whatever it is, You can't replicate that anywhere else. You don't get that by dialing in on Zoom. You definitely don't get that, you know, just sitting next to people at Accelerate. It's really an awesome experience. I met you there, obviously. I met, you know, a bunch of other people there. And then, you know, very similar at the Market Masters event that you put together in Austin. That was absolutely life changing. That was kind of taking that sort of a setting to the next level and just having people who are there because they're after the same thing that you are and they're there to help you if they're the experts that were brought in. You just don't get that anywhere else. Kevin King: So you said you started selling on Amazon in 2022, but you were selling on your own site or somewhere else before that, right? Julie Napolitano: Yes, so I launched D2C Black Friday 2019 actually, so just about five years ago. Prior to that, my experience was all corporate, so almost 20 years, mostly in financial markets. I had no experience in entrepreneurship, product development, marketing, supply chain, any of the things that you really need to understand to succeed in building a CPG business, a brand. That was just all new for me. I had an idea in 2019. So I was fostering a couple of dogs. One of them had very dry paws and I thought, oh, let me just go buy something for him. And I check the labels for everything. So whether it's shampoo or snacks, food for the house, anything that comes in, I'm looking at the ingredients. And there just wasn't anything in the market that was really clean where I felt like, okay, this makes sense to buy for a dog. So I felt like there was an opportunity. I set out to create something better. So at the time, I was still working full time in my corporate life. So nights and weekends, I started with the research on the ingredients. So I was literally reading the veterinary journals through my alumni access, like, I had spreadsheets going of which ingredients seemed good, which ones seemed bad. Lots of nights and weekends in the kitchen. I was melting ingredients down. I didn't have a commercial kitchen, so this was just all me on my own. I came up with a formula that just seemed like it would be really good based on everything that I'd read. The ingredients were amazing, very clean label and it worked. I went to market with that Black Friday 2019 and that's pretty much how I started on Shopify. Kevin King: Why did you go Shopify? Is that just what you had stumbled on on YouTube or that's all you knew at the time or why Shopify and why didn't you go to Amazon at that time? Julie Napolitano: So initially, I was very intentional about avoiding Amazon and I I've seen some of the stories about founders just getting screwed one way or the other. It can be a very tough, brutal environment to succeed in. And I said, I'm not going down that road. I'm absolutely not going to Amazon. I'm going to do this on my own. I'm going to build a website, focus on SEO to drive the traffic. And that's what I did. And it really, for the first couple of years, started to grow pretty slowly. But I started to connect with other founders through different accelerators and incubators. Hear of their successes that they were having on Amazon. And one of them, you know, we did a screen share and he was showing me actually Helium 10. And he showed me behind the scenes, like the data that he was looking at. And I realized, you know, the opportunity is a lot more. I guess it's a lot more calculated, the risk that you're taking than I realized. You know, at the time, it felt like Amazon to me was just this like jungle and it was very arbitrary, like you may make it or you may get screwed, but you can really shape the opportunities that you create for yourself by doing that research upfront, the product research, the platforms that were there to support those go-to-market strategies. I just wasn't familiar with any of that existing prior to that. So having that introduction from founders that were already doing that, I thought, okay, there's really something here. And then 2022, I attended Accelerate virtually and I participated in all the little webinars and started to learn a lot more about it. And that was the winter that I went live on Amazon. So I kind of took those sessions to figure out like, OK, here's how I built a listing. This is what A plus content is and so forth. And so I launched that December. Kevin King: So on your DTCs, on your Shopify site, you just had the the Paul cream or did you initially and then you added some additional products later or how did that work? Julie Napolitano: Great question. So yeah, so when I launched, it was just, so it was Pup Wax was the name of it and it was clean skin care for dogs. I was doing that the first couple of years. Spring 2021, I was in Target's first pets accelerator. It was called Target Take Off Pets. And that was basically an educational program. They had 10 of us founders globally that they brought in for all kinds of education sessions and I'm just understanding how to enter mass retail, what a buyer is looking for. That was my first exposure to mass retail. So prior to that, like I said, completely different background, didn't really know anything about retail. The biggest takeaway there was that the buyer said, in order to bring a brand in, they really need a whole assortment. They're not going to bring in a single SKU with a couple of variants. So from that program, at the end of that program, you know, I didn't have a placement on shelf. We mutually agreed it's much too early. I hired a market researcher and we spent five months doing one-on-one user interviews. So we interviewed pet parents across the U.S. and Canada for five months, you know, just really understanding their pain points, their unmet needs. Kevin King: In person or by Zoom? Julie Napolitano: This was all Zoom. This was 2021. And then at the end of that, we followed up with the survey to over a thousand dog parents, also US and Canada, to really make sure that we understood what we thought our findings were and that those were the real takeaways. And that market research is really how the roadmap for the next brand was born. So my current brand, Puppington, really evolved out of that. So Pup Wax was kind of that first iteration. And then I pivoted, rebranded and launched Puppington in February 2022. And with what additional products? So the learning, the focus there was really just the biggest pain point for pet parents at that time was really navigating their dog's anxiety, helping dogs deal with their anxiety, figuring out how to manage that as a pet parent. And so I decided that that would be the focus for the brand. So it was calm pups, happy humans and everything that we can do to support pet parents on their journey. I launched with a few products, so calming chews for dogs, like supplements for dogs, calming toys, calming beds and so forth. And then the one that really took off when I first launched on Amazon was the dog chews. So it was ultra calming pet chews. I worked with a veterinarian on those and we went through all of the same kind of market research, making sure that we had something that worked, that was effective. It was CBD-free, it was THC-free, but it had magnesium, valerian root, chamomile, all of these calming ingredients. And I thought, wow, this is great. This is really going to work. People loved it initially. And then it sold out the first month or so. Sales were doing really well on Amazon. This was coinciding with my launch. And then, boom, Amazon delisted the product. And I was still brand new as a seller. I was like two months into my Amazon journey. So I really didn't understand how to navigate something like that the way I would today. So here I am, I had just launched, I maxed out a credit card, buying more inventory, and then boom, delisted. So they said that it was violating So because of the inclusion of hemp seed meal, they said that it's not compliant for sale in the state of Idaho, which was not correct. Hemp seed meal actually was deregulated by the Farm Bill Act of 2018. It's no longer a regulated ingredient. You can buy hemp seed meal, you can buy hemp seed oil, any sort of hemp seeds literally for salad since 2018. But it took me until July of that year to get the product reinstated. And if I had known then what I know now about how much of those restrictions are actually just bots that are flagging something and you just need some human intervention to take a look and understand. There are hundreds of other, if not thousands of other hemp seed products on Amazon because there are not actually restrictions around their sale. But again, at the time I didn't know. So that killed my lunch, destroyed the product as you can imagine. Not just the months without sales, but then coming back and having no sales velocity and I wasn't really able to recover it. So while all of that was happening... Kevin King: How did you get it back? What did you do to get it back? Just keep at them? Keep contacting them or do you end up hiring somebody to help you? Julie Napolitano: I just kept at it, but it took me a lot longer than it should have because I did not understand how much automation there was, I think, behind the scenes. So I thought someone at a very high level and risk is actually taking a look at this and perhaps they need a month or whatever it is to look into this. So when I would get a reply back, initially, it was not obvious to me. In time, after a couple of months of this, it becomes obvious that these responses are canned and they're automated. But I just didn't have that knowledge at the time. So eventually it came back up and it was just the result of a few months of several months of me pushing back every time going back. But in the meantime, I said I can never be this exposed to a single product ever again. And so I started to build out the brand and kind of expand into other areas that had a little less risk when it comes to an item being perishable or an item being subject to the whims of a taste of a dog or a human. So I moved more into textiles after that. Kevin King: I know you sent me one of your more recent products. I just recently lost my dog Zoe, but she loved playing with a little, it's like a little ball, like a little soft ball and I would hide treats in there. And she would go in there and push it all over the floor and like paw at it and I'd take little treats and tear them in half and stick them all throughout there. She loved that toy. What gave you the idea for that? Did that come out of these focus group studies or did you see an opportunity like on Helium 10? Julie Napolitano: Yep. Yeah. And by the way, thank you for sharing the videos of her playing with that. She was so precious and just really sorry for your loss. She was really cool and adorable. So that came out of just really wanting to build out the brand around calming products for dogs. So that was designed to be a calming toy. I think Zoe just probably loved it because she loved it. But some dogs who really, really have a hard time settling down, doing scent work helps to soothe them, helps to calm them down and also keeps them busy for a long time, especially when they're indoors. And so being able to sniff out the treats. Yeah, you know, I felt like that was a cool product. My dog at the time loved it. And I thought, yeah, let me do something with this. Kevin King: You said earlier you foster dogs. Do you also have dogs or you had a dog? Julie Napolitano: I have two dogs right now. They are each four years old, both pandemic pups. We got the first one, Rusty, when he was 10 weeks old and he had incredibly high anxiety. We worked with three different trainers and two of them said he's one of the most extreme cases that they've ever worked with. It was really, really, really challenging. We were also advised not to get another dog to keep all of our attention on him. You know, we would socialize him. We would take him to the doggy daycares and he was definitely happier around other dogs. So when he was five months old that October, I said, you know, I think he needs a playmate. And so against everyone's advice, the advice of all the trainers, we found Coco, who is a super street smart rescue. She was found like Living on her own in Mississippi, really sad story, but she's just super street smart. Whatever she got out of those early months, she is an escape artist. She's super confident. And when she's around, Rusty is like a different person, like a different dog. He just is totally relaxed. And the second that she's gone, like if she's gone because she hopped the fence, which she does, he just loses it. He really needs her by his side to stay calm. Kevin King: What kind of dogs are they? Julie Napolitano: They're both hound mixes. Rusty is 50% treeing walker coon hound. And then the rest we don't know. We only know because one of his litter mates was DNA tested. And the rest was this big mix. And Coco seems to be a red bone hound mix. Kevin King: It's so important what you said there. You got them at 10 months. A lot of people I think that don't understand dogs or maybe they have dogs as a pet but they don't really focus on them is those first six to eight weeks after they come off their litter, usually you can separate a puppy at about eight weeks. But the next six to eight weeks are so critical in a dog's life and a lot of people I think don't understand that. A lot of dog owners don't understand that. When they get a new puppy, it's like, oh, look at the cute puppy. Okay, we got to potty train it. We got to do a few things. But that time is the most critical for shaping its personality, shaping its demeanor, shaping It's habits, everything beyond just training. And that's why I'm planning on getting a dog soon. And I'm making sure that I'm not doing any travel for almost two months because I want to spend that time. That's when you bond with it. And I take the dog. I did this with Zoe. I took her, like you said, you took him to doggy daycare to socialize him with other dogs. I did extensive training like four to six hours a day probably of me, you know, not, not all in one whack, but you know, 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there. The dog's attention doesn't can't do that. And then I exposed them to every kind of surface. Like let's go walk on gravel. Let's go rock on grass, go walk on. I try to take them to every type of person, old person, young person, black person, Hispanic person, Asian person, whatever, expose them to men, women, all different sizes, and then expose them to all kinds of other environmental things like scooters and bicycles and skateboards and whatever. And I think that makes a huge difference. And if you spend that time, it's like raising a kid in some ways, but you spend that time Really concentrated on them. I think that you're gonna be a lot happier and you get a totally different type of pet and dog down the road for the next 10-15 years. Do you agree with that? Julie Napolitano: I could not agree with you more. And that's actually one of the things that's unfortunate about Rusty's situation. So we got him in May of 2020. So just two months into the pandemic, we didn't really know what was going on. We were still wearing masks and I think bringing in groceries with gloves. And so he was socialized with dogs, but not with people because we were not really around people. He would see people in the parks, on the trails. Everyone had masks on though at the time. I'm still. And so even now, you know, he doesn't have that same comfort with people he doesn't know that he would have if he had been socialized with other humans the way that you just described. He didn't get to experience that. And then the other thing with Rusty is so we we know his whole story because he was actually born in foster care. So his mom was being fostered when she had him and the rest of the litter. He was the runt of the litter. So he was basically being completely rejected by her. And You know, the way that dogs are with the rent. He suffered from that. And so I think that definitely shaped how he has turned out and what his personality is now. You know, everything that he's gone through in those first couple of months of his life, even before we had him. Kevin King: I was reading something recently. Dogs in society in the United States, they're like the number one pet. They become part of the family. To some people, a dog is a farm animal. It stays outside, go chase the sheep. But other people, it's a substitute for a child. I read something that a lot of younger people in their 20s now, a lot of them are not getting married or they're not even really having serious relationships, but they're actually adopting pets at a much higher rate. And then you have countries like Korea, South Korea to be specific, that dogs are huge. I mean, they're like, I mean, we here in Austin, Austin's a very dog friendly city. We have dog bakeries where you actually drive through like a McDonald's and like, you know, give me two biscuits for the dog. And some of the hamburger places, you know, they have a little treat thing by the window. You know, here's your hamburger and your fries and oh, you got Fido in there. Here's a little treat for him. That's really something probably in the last 10 to 20 years where that's really started to explode. It's always kind of been there a little bit, but it's really started to explode. What do you think that reason is that people in certain societies are starting to bond a lot more with their dogs especially? I mean, cats too to some degree, but dogs especially. What do you think that is? Julie Napolitano: I think part of it is just the demographic shift towards not having children or having them much later and that leaves possibly a void or just kind of still this natural urge to have another being that you're bonding with and that you're taking care of and that's there for you at the end of each day and you're there for them. I think that's part of it. People are also, younger people are starting to move out to live on their own later in life. So I think it's probably easier to bring a pet into that environment than starting a family when you're possibly still living at home. And I think also, A lot of it is just that there is so much more support now for pet parents. A lot more brands have shown up to serve that niche and to meet those gaps. So whether it's much better toys than ever existed before or even clothes for pets or houses for pets, there are hotels for dogs that are strictly for dogs. The same way that we would have a hotel, they have their own room, they have a TV, they have a couch. Kevin King: When I would travel, I was paying $77 a night for a room that's probably the size of my little studio here. I don't know, 8 by 10. It's not a cage. It's like 8 by 10. She had a bed in there. I would take her to bed and if you have a toy, she had a TV. They just play, I don't know, dog TV or something, just dog noise. I had a camera where I could look in on her. I call it the dog hotel. She's going to the doggy hotel and it has a pool where the dogs can go, a waiting pool for the dogs and play areas and the whole nine yards. The industry of pets is huge, as you know, on Amazon, especially when it comes to dogs. But because of that, there's so many people that are similar to you that are like, oh, I have a great idea. My dog, I wish there was this product. Let me go make it or let me go sell it on Amazon. It's super competitive and I know it's one of the top. For PPC, one of the most expensive PPC categories, especially on the supplement side for dogs, how do you stand out? I mean, when you first made your product, you saw a need and you made the solution for it with the cream. But then going beyond that, even though your cream might be better and you did a lot of work experimenting and working in the kitchen and trying different things and doing your research, Even with all that work and you have a better product, that doesn't mean you're going to actually sell it. Even though the man might be there, there might be somebody else that's out marketing you or out positioning you or got more reviews. So how do you approach, what's your approach when it comes to pets to actually say, look, my product is better and I've seen your products, they are better than a lot of what's out there. How do you position that so that you can actually get a foothold in and just not be crushed and actually make some money? Julie Napolitano: I think if I were to do it today, so going back to the supplement that I launched in 2022, it was a very expensive market to play in. Since that time, I've heard from founders who say they never spent less than $200,000 or $300,000 on each supplement that they launched. I did not have that sort of capital at all by any means. So to your point, you're spending $5, $6 a click going up against players who have years of subscription revenue to basically fund that sort of ad spend because they've got that recurring revenue to spend on customer acquisition. As a new brand, you don't have that. And so going into it, if I were to launch a supplement today, which I wouldn't. But it's just a really crowded space. I'm not sure what's left for me to add in that space. But if I were to do that, I would start by making sure that there is something that's a differentiator for which the demand actually exists. So Pup Wax was really different. But at the end of the day, it was also a niche that was much smaller. Not every dog, thankfully, has skin issues, but every dog eats. Every dog has snacks. And then on the flip side, that makes it a very crowded space. So you would need to focus on What are the differentiators? Where can I do something that's different that everybody else is doing? But then also, would anyone find it? Is it solving a problem where people are searching for the solutions? Say it's a hair growth supplement for dogs, maybe nobody's doing that. But if 1% of dogs, and I'm just making these numbers up, if 1% of dogs have hair loss issues, you're just not going to have the demand to have a successful launch necessarily. And so I think a lot in being successful on Amazon comes down to the data and understanding the demand for what you're launching. One of the things I learned in Japan is that you're not launching products, you're launching groups of keywords. And that is something that just really stuck with me. And that's really what it comes down to when you're doing the math to understand like, is this a path that can be profitable? Kevin King: So how is marketing to pet parents different than marketing to just the parents? So like, how would I market differently a dog product to you? If you're going on Amazon and you're looking for a product for Julie and you're like, this is for me or I need something for me versus I'm buying something for my pet, what's the difference in the psychology or the little twist that you got to make? When you're actually doing the marketing and writing the copy, beyond the keywords and beyond making sure you've got all that stuff for discoverability, but the emotional side of it, the psychological side, what do you feel is different or that you have to do? You've probably got a lot of valuable information about these thousand people that you talk to. What do you see there? What can you advise there? Julie Napolitano: I think that the barrier is actually higher in pets than marketing similar products for humans. I think as pet parents, we are less likely to take risks with our pets. We will try a supplement perhaps and maybe not like the taste or throw it out or it doesn't work. But if it's for our dog, we need to know. We need to trust who's making it. We need to trust who is behind it. We need to understand everything about it. And we need to be sure it's not going to give them an upset stomach. Dogs in particular are very sensitive as far as what they ingest. Even if it's a great product, they don't tolerate change well and it can take a couple of weeks to kind of transition slowly to a new product. And so I think pet parents are actually much less trusting and much less inclined to try something new, even if you're giving out free samples. If it's a farmer's market, I'll try it if it's free for myself. But will I give it to my dog? Probably not. Is it worth, you know, possibly having a stomachache later for something that, you know, I don't know the person that made it. And so I think, you know, and same with toys, I think there is a higher expectation of quality. And, you know, we want to make sure it's not going to fall apart or break or, you know, they can choke on it or something, just things that we are less concerned when we're shopping for ourselves. And I mean us, I don't mean our children, obviously. Yeah, I think that it's actually harder to market to pet parents. And that was something that I think I learned over the last couple of years that I didn't initially anticipate. You really have to work to gain their trust and earn their trust. It's not something you can just take for granted or get because you've sent them 10 emails. That's not going to cut it. Kevin King: So how do you do that? Is that with reviews of other people they trust? Is it word of mouth? How do you get someone to try something and trust you when they don't know you? And especially like, I agree with what you just said. I think you made a very good point that we're willing to try things on ourselves that we're not willing to try on our dog or on our pet because the pet, I think part of it's like, we know that, oh, if this gives me an upset stomach, I'll just deal with it. I'll be okay. But well, what if it actually gives my dog and poor dog, I don't, their feelings and they can't do anything about it. And I got to, you know, it's a whole different, I agree a thousand percent with what you said, but how do you overcome that? What were some tactics or techniques that you found that have worked for you with your brand to help you nudge in that door of trust and just give it a try? Julie Napolitano: Yeah, I think what works best is when that recommendation comes from someone that is already trusted. So whether it is an influencer that someone follows. So, you know, often I hear like, I'll try it because they said so, you know, but they would never just try it because a brand said so. Or, you know, whether that is a trusted retailer that is offering a product. And, you know, like, for example, Whole Foods, has a very, very stringent vetting process as far as like what ingredients are allowed to be sold in its products. So someone may try something because Whole Foods is carrying it. But outside of that, you know, they wouldn't try it unless they've heard from like 10 other people that it's working. So I think Influencer marketing works well, but for me, I found it was very hard to scale because those relationships that were effective were the ones where I nurtured them over years of truly building authentic relationships where they started to love the brand so much that they would post about it for free just because they're using it that day and they love it and they have a couple hundred thousand followers, but it's not about the money at that point anymore. It's just because they're excited about the brand. And I think their followers know that and they can sense that and they can They perceive that when they see someone just posting about a product because they love it versus a sponsored post that was paid for for that week or that month. Kevin King: It's more authentic. How did you finance all this? I mean, you said earlier you put something on a credit card, but you had a corporate job. I'm assuming you're making a decent salary. Then in 2019, you jump in and launch the cream and then you've expanded additional things. You dabbled in supplements and realized, hey, this is taking a lot of money. How did you finance this whole thing? Did you have to go into debt or did you have some savings or you have an investor? Julie Napolitano: I'm now completely bootstrapped, so I don't have any investors, so it's a mix of savings and grants. I've applied to pretty much every opportunity that's come along. Kevin King: What kind of grants? Julie Napolitano: That's interesting. Kevin King: We don't hear that very often, grants. Julie Napolitano: Oh yeah. So like UBS Project Entrepreneur, that was a $25,000 grant that I received. New Voices sponsored one together with Target. That was $15,000. Dell, I won $5,000. They all add up. Kevin King: How do you find those? Were you just Googling like grants for entrepreneurs or grants for female entrepreneurs or dog, pet? How did you find that stuff? Julie Napolitano: So different ways. So some, you know, just through programs, once I've taken part, then, you know, they have mailing lists, and they'll share opportunities, others. So I've signed up for Google Alerts. And I had Google Alerts set up for every combination that you could think of, like CPG, Founder Grant, Women Accelerator Grant, Women Incubator, Pet Care, you know, Pet care, grant, Leap Ventures is a big one in the pet space. The one that probably was the most life-changing for me was the Tory Burch Foundation Fellowship that was a one-year program. Yeah, so just kind of every which way. There's not really one list for all the grants. Hello Alice has a lot of grant resources that they share monthly as well. Kevin King: That's really cool. That's an interesting tack that I don't hear too many people talk about going the grant method to actually launch a product. So the Tory Forge, you said that's a year and it was influential. What do you mean by that? Is every month you got some money or was it some training or some connections that came out of that or how was it really beneficial? Julie Napolitano: No, so that's a really amazing program because of the way that it's structured. So a lot of these kind of corporate associated accelerators, the corporation will provide some grant money and then that's it. Tori Burch herself is extremely passionate about supporting female entrepreneurs. So she has an entire operations team behind the fellowship program. So it's a year of educational programming, a year of like one-on-one. Well, the advisory support actually continues. So you have advisors anywhere from like buyers from Whole Foods or from Nordstrom or from You know, like all paths of life from supply chain, logistics, marketing, who you're able to tap into as part of your network, who are just also passionate about helping entrepreneurs succeed. And there is a $5,000 educational grant attached as well, which is also fantastic. But the bigger piece of that fellowship is really the accessibility to advisors, having them as part of your network that you wouldn't otherwise have. And a lot of these grant programs that I have been lucky enough to benefit from, a lot of them are attached to different accelerators. And so through the accelerator programs, typically they're anywhere from like four weeks to six weeks, Tory Burch's was a year long. There's just so much that comes out of that in the way of networking and understanding the different opportunities for the business, helping you to identify some of the blind spots, and then also just making connections that can kind of help you get to that next step. Kevin King: You said you were in the Target one and I'm assuming you got into a little bit of retail with Target when you're in that little deal or no? Julie Napolitano: No. So the program culminated with a line review. So basically, that's your opportunity to actually pitch the buyer the same as any other brand who may be interested in getting placed in Target. You have the same amount of time. But the difference is that the program, the five-week program before that helped to prepare you for the line review and understand exactly how to pitch. And we mutually agreed it's too early for the brand at the time. And I just had that single skew, so it did not make sense. And so that's something that I haven't felt ready to pursue yet. It's a lot easier to get into mass retail than to stay into mass retail. And if you launch in Target or any mass retailer and it flops, you're done. You don't really get another shot. And so you want to be sure that you have the supply chain and the capabilities to succeed, not just on the supply chain side, but on the marketing side, the ad spend that's required for a successful launch. And that really makes sense for your business before you go all in. Kevin King: So now are you just Amazon and Shopify? Are you doing anything else besides at Walmart or anything else? Julie Napolitano: So I launched Nordstrom November 1st, actually. So just over two weeks ago. Kevin King: Congratulations. Thank you. Was that a regional test or a nationwide test? Julie Napolitano: So it's national online, digital right now. So it's been really, really great. Amazing opportunity. And yeah, it's been going well. It's actually been very interesting to see. So that's actually something that came out of the Tory Burch program again. So I was connected to some people at Nordstrom who connected me to some other people and that just evolved from there. But I've been talking to them for a couple of years and the timing was right this time. But it's been very interesting as a seller to see the differences in just the ease of being live in a different marketplace compared to Amazon. Amazon can be very siloed in the way that some things are approached when it comes to compliance issues and so forth. And so it's been definitely a breath of fresh air to just experience it differently. Kevin King: How many SKUs total do you have right now? Julie Napolitano: Probably about 30. So I'm in the process of whittling it down and that is something that came out of the think tank in Austin was really to focus on what's working and cut everything that's not. So I've been laser focused on getting rid of SKUs, selling them out and just really, really doubling down on what's been working. Kevin King: Let's talk about this, the think tank that you came to. I mean, you came out. You're a little hesitant to come. I think Tim, again, told you, hey, just trust the process. You should come. And I remember we have you on camera. I have you on camera going, this was amazing. This was life-changing. This was different. I remember I didn't moderate yours. I think Mark did, but I came in and heard parts of it. I remember A couple people, I think Steve Simonson was like even, you know, he's like kind of pushing back on a couple of your thoughts pretty strongly at one point there and like saying like, look, you're thinking this totally wrong. You need to hit yourself on the head and think of this in a different way almost. And then you came around. You're like, oh yeah, you're actually, I think you're actually right on some of this. I don't agree with you on everything. Thank you, right. But what did you get out of that? There's another think tank that's happening in February. So that was the first one I'd done. And then basically I got a 10 out of 10. I mean, there's a small little tweaks here and there that we can make, but people were, some people were saying this is even better than BDSS event. And so I'm doing it again in February and it's a whole different There are a few of the same experts, but over half of them are totally different that are going to be coming out and some of it will depend on who is actually in the hot seat. It was difficult to get people to come out because they're like, what is this? I don't understand. This is a lot of money. So I had to discount it to get people to even pay. And then once people were there, most of them were like, I would have paid five or 10 times this if I knew what I was getting. What was it, what did you get out of the think tank that if someone listening to this maybe is like, well, maybe I need some help with my business or I'm kind of stuck or we have people doing, you know, $130 million there. We have people doing 75 million. So it's not just, and then we have people that are, you know, doing a little bit less than a million. It's the whole range. What did you get from that? What was the value of that for you? Julie Napolitano: So you got to have a really thick skin to be there. But that's the idea, right? You're going to be told and to be shown where your blind spots are. What are you missing? What are you not seeing in your business? Where are you just completely fucking up and on the wrong path? And what would somebody like, you know, I went in with certain questions where I thought, okay, these are the things I need answers to. And my think tank I opened my eyes to problems that I didn't even know I had and opportunities that I didn't even know that I should be solving for. So for example, one was the unit economics. I thought, you know, they were pretty decent for my hero products. And I learned from that, you know, just different areas where there's still a lot of opportunity to do better. And that is something that, you know, I mean, when you're scaling a business, that's what it all comes down to is the unit economics, right? So if, you know, whether it's 10 cents or a buck, That's a massive difference over time. And so I think, you know, for a lot of us, you know, just talking to other people who participated in the think tank, you're going with like this, you know, not even an expectation. You're not really sure how it's going to go, but you figure you're definitely going to get some good value out of it. And then just mind blowing, not even just my own think tank, just being able to sit in on and observe some of the other think tanks, some of the hot seats, which was like hanging out in the living room, just kind of brainstorming around someone else's problem. All of those, you know, probably any one of those experiences, like if you took any two hour period out of the four or five days that we were there, just was completely transformative for the business, the takeaways from that. So one of the first steps that I took after leaving was Finalizing with Zignify, I'd been talking to them for quite some time about a sourcing project and that just kind of clenched it for me like, okay, I think there's a huge opportunity here. And so moving forward with them, they provide sourcing services all over the world. I've heard you speak about them. I've met Julie obviously in Japan and just, I think coming through the think tank experience and hearing from others, okay, these are some opportunities that I see for you changed everything. Kevin King: What is a think tank? You're like, oh, this is a mastermind. There's some presentations and, uh, oh, you're sitting in a chair up in front of an audience. And, you know, some people are answering, answering your questions. Can you explain what, how the process works? Maybe walk me through like, okay, when you, when you came, this is what I expected. When I sat down, this is what happened. This is the process. And afterwards, this is what, how I felt. Can you, can you kind of walk me through that whole, whole explain it in detail? Julie Napolitano: Sure, sure. So it starts before we even arrive, right? Like with a very long questionnaire about every aspect of the business and really forces you to think about the issues that you have, the things that you'd like answers to. Those are shared confidentially with the experts that are then curated specifically for your think tank to help work on some of the problems that you've identified. So you come for your think tank, you have The choice to either have it open for the other participants to sit in on or not. Mine was closed. And then you've got, I think, 10 to 12 experts sitting around a table. The first hour, they are just asking you questions to really, really understand your business. So they've read beforehand what you've shared about the business, but they take that hour to ask questions about everything under the sun from your decisions to your process, to your costs, to just all of it. And then the next hour, I believe was just sharing recommendations or going around the room based on each of their different areas of expertise. And remember, they've been curated, like specifically for your business to add value. And so then going around the room and kind of getting all of their ideas, their insights. And the final takeaway is like an actual plan of, you know, these are the action items to get from where you are today to where you want to be, you know, whether it's six months out, a year out, this is how you get there. This is the roadmap. So you are leaving with a very actionable roadmap that is coming from the inputs of some of the best people in the space, people doing I think eight, nine figures even. Kevin King: You came in expecting to get one thing, but you got something different. Can you talk about that? Julie Napolitano: Sure. I think for me, what was so different was the takeaways, like learning, okay, here are some fundamental things that are not working well in my business where I didn't even really think that those were the priorities. And even all the way down to the listing level, I thought my listings were pretty decent. And not just in the think tank, what's really cool about the experience is because you're there in this mansion with these people for days, they will just grab you. A couple of people pulled me aside and they're like, hey, let's sit down. And they showed me, this is why your listings are like, I wouldn't buy this. And here's why. And that candid conversation, you're not going to get that anywhere else. People will say, Oh, your stuff looks great. It looks cool. Or, you know, maybe change this. But these are people who are not afraid to be blunt. And, you know, that's what we came for, right? Like that really, really honest feedback on like, here's how I can improve and definitely came away with that. Kevin King: So was it a little scary to go through this process of someone listening to this like, this sounds interesting, maybe I want to try, but I don't want to like show all my warts and have someone tear me a new asshole, you know, over my business. This might be embarrassing or this might be, you know, it might make me cry. What would you say to those people? Julie Napolitano: Amazon's going to tear you a new one, right? So isn't it better to let someone else do it that will actually get you to where you want to be? You have to have a thick skin and everything. And especially as an Amazon seller, if you're not willing to hear the feedback on how to improve your business, whether it's Amazon or any kind of business, I don't know if your business is going to last. Kevin King: Where are you going from here? What's the plan? Is it to continue to, like you said, you're going to go from 30 SKUs and probably cut some of those back and concentrate in some of the more of your hero SKUs and then is it to get into retail? Is it to keep growing it and hopefully sell it in three or four years? What's the Julie plan? Julie Napolitano: Yeah. So right now, I don't know if you saw, but one of my products was named Oprah's Favorite Things. It was announced the same day as the Nordstrom launch. So that... Kevin King: Oh, awesome. Congratulations again on that. Julie Napolitano: Thank you. Thank you. That has skyrocketed the business and sales and just already taking everything to... Kevin King: How did you get that one? Did you submit? Was that another one where you submitted something or they find you? Julie Napolitano: No, the team found me at a trade show, actually. And so, lots of samples were sent and shared. And I honestly don't know how I got so lucky. It's been a huge, huge blessing. It's only been since November 1. So, there's the bump in sales, but just the rise in visibility. And I think that credibility that it gives the business as well. Oprah is obviously looking at hundreds or thousands of products over the years. And this is a product but also a brand that she's gotten really excited about. And so that was definitely going to shape what I'm focusing on for the next year to come. I was already primarily going in that direction with the business. And then the Nordstrom launch as well coinciding with the announcement has been Really great timing. So I am planning for the next year to focus not just on where I'm growing, but also where I can cut costs, where I can do better in the supply chain. The things that I've learned in the think tank around that are definitely areas that I'll be focusing on. Kevin King: So what's the hardest thing about running your own e-commerce business? Julie Napolitano: What makes it hardest to scale is understanding or getting better at Finding ways to outsource different pieces so that you're not wearing all of the hats all of the time. I think that that is something that I probably tend to do for too long. Like I'm just too much in the weeds. And another one of the recommendations from the think tank was a few different books that focus on understanding how to pull yourself out of the business so that you're not actually working in it all of the time. And I think that that is something that makes it a lot harder to scale. Back to your question about five years out, I would love to exit. And in order to be positioned to exit, you need the teams in place and also the process for every step, everything that you're doing in the business. And I think a lot of times people are not thinking about that early enough as they're building the business. So that is something that I'm definitely more focused on now as well. Kevin King: So what's the funnest part? When you're doing this part of the business, you're like, the time just flies. You're like, oh my God, it's been four hours. It feels like 10 minutes. Julie Napolitano: I think the product development, the ideation, coming up with the new ideas and also just constantly coming up with ways to make it even better, even more fun, even cooler. I think as a brand owner, I love that part. Kevin King: So how important is it to get out? There's a lot of sellers that they only watch virtual stuff and they never actually go to person. You've been to a few events. How has that changed or has it changed your business? Because you can go to these events and there's a lot of information. Some of it applies to you. Some of it doesn't. You got to implement on it to actually get the value. But beyond that, what is it about as an e-commerce seller that getting out of your own little house or your own little comfort zone that is beneficial? Julie Napolitano: Most of the conversation doesn't happen in that recorded hour on screen or in the session. It can happen when you're sitting in the session and you're talking to the people next to you or you're sitting around the lunch table or you're having dinner later. You will miss out on I think like 80% of what is happening or kind of the value that you can take away if you're not attending in person. There is not a single event that I have attended where I felt afterward like that was not a good use of my time. Not every event has the best content, but then it can be somebody that I met. It only takes one conversation for a lasting connection. And you just never know when and where that will happen. And it definitely won't happen when you're sitting at home. It just doesn't. Kevin King: You mentioned that's Amazon or e-commerce types of events. You mentioned trade shows. You got the Oprah thing off a trade show. How important do you think it is to get out there? Were you exhibiting at this trade show or were you just walking around the trade show? A lot of brands don't do that. Can you talk about the value and the importance of maybe doing that as well? Julie Napolitano: I think that depends on strategic priorities for a brand. If you're planning to sell only on Amazon, I don't know what the value is. If it's really there and investing in a trade show, they're not necessarily cheap. The one that I've done the last couple of years is New York Now, which I think is more accessible in terms of pricing. It's like $4,000 or $5,000 at the lowest level. Some trade shows start at $10,000, $15,000. Is that a pet show or a gift show? Kevin King: What type of show is it? Julie Napolitano: Yeah, it used to be called The Gift Show actually. So the history was gift and it's split into gift, home and I forgot their other category. But yeah, its origins were as a gift show and it's still primarily that. But I think- At the Javits Center? Yeah, it's at the Javits Center. And Shop Object is another one that happens at exactly the same time each year. So each February and August kind of coincides with New York now. And there are tons all over the country, right? Like there's a Dallas market that's huge in Texas. There's Atlanta market. There's the Vegas market, Seattle. Kevin King: Yeah, the pet shows too. You have pet... Julie Napolitano: Yep. Global Pet and SuperZoo are the two big ones. Kevin King: SuperZoo in Vegas and then Global Pet in Orlando, I think it is. Yeah. Julie Napolitano: Exactly. Yeah. So I mean, I think that is more of a question for a brand if they want to get into wholesale or not. For me, I still didn't have the same clarity that I have today around the direction of the business. So I was kind of just trying everything, right? Like going to all the Amazon events, trying the trade shows, just trying to figure out what will make sense. To be perfectly candid, I didn't have this ironclad strategy where I knew, okay, this is exactly what I need to be doing. I was just trying a bunch of things. Kevin King: Well, Julie, this has been fun. I really appreciate you coming on here and sharing. If someone wanted to reach out to you or if Oprah's little sister is listening and says, oh, I want her brand in my stores as well, how would they find you? What's the best way to reach out to you? Julie Napolitano: Yep. So on all social, it's at Puppington.co. And same as the website, it's .co, not .com, although I now actually have the .com. It took me a couple of years to acquire that one. And yeah, by email, it's hello at Puppington.co. Always love to connect with other sellers, other founders, or anyone just looking to learn about selling. Kevin King: Thanks, Julie. I'm sure I'll see you again. It's somewhere in 2025. You never know where. I'm actually getting a puppy. So I'm not going anywhere for a couple of months. I have not, but by the time this comes out, I may have one or I'm debating, do I get it now or do I wait till after BDSS in April? So I'm debating. So I'm either going to have it now or I'll wait until mid-April when I come back from BDSS because I've got a few events and that way I can, like I said earlier, I want to focus for a couple of months and not be traveling and bond on it. That's going to be my new little buddy. But dogs are good people. Their only flaw is they don't stay with us long enough. But it's a cool niche to be in and congratulations on all your success. Julie Napolitano: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Kevin King: When you do a business that's also your passion, like Julie's case where she loves pets and loves dogs specifically, it makes it a lot easier to do it for the long term and to wait for that final payday as you're building it and maybe not take a lot of money out as you go along. But you're building towards something and you're having some fun and you're helping others and helping other people along the way and that's exactly what Julie's been doing. We'll be back again next week with another episode of the AM-PM Podcast. If you want to come to Market Masters, you can go to BillionDollarSellers.com and get the latest information on the next Market Masters Think Tank event that Julie talked about. It's February 20th to the 24th in Austin, Texas at the Gatsby Mansion, but all the details are at BillionDollarSellersSummit.com. Before we leave today, I've got some words of wisdom for you. It's up to you to make the magic happen. I encourage you to live life to the fullest and without fear. See you again next week. Unknown Speaker: Let's get started.