Under The Hood: Michelle from Rowan

Welcome Michelle! Let’s dive into it. How did the idea for Rowan come about? And what did it take to go from inception to having a product in the hands of consumers?

A little background here is helpful: I come from the clean home industry. I worked at Method for about 11 years where I wore many hats from leading the North American organization in my role as VP, GM North America to working on the team that built the industry’s first LEED platinum-certified manufacturing plant, known as the South Side Soapbox in Pullman, Chicago. Prior to method I spent eight years in CPG leadership positions across Clorox, Nestle Powerbar and Bevology, a beverage start-up based in San Francisco. So I've worked in the “Better For You” space for a really long time. It's definitely my passion place.

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In my last role at Method as head of North America my very favorite person to work with was the head of global creative. Her name is Sally Clarke (picture - right). That name will sound familiar to you because she's my co-founder at Rowan. The idea for Rowan came about because we had both gotten our first dogs as adults. We would go on coffee walks and talk about our dogs, their antics, and the joy that they brought. And then we would talk about the products that we’d buy for our dogs.

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What we found was that in the world of pet food, products are regulated. We’ve seen some really neat innovation the last handful of years in the pet food space, but in the world of grooming it's all unregulated...it's kind of a dog's breakfast: There are some good products out there and some not so good products out there. And it's all very confusing. Even for someone like me who has a deeper understanding about ingredients. The vets would recommend things all over the place. So, Sally and I started noodling on ideas on those walks.

Sally had left Method to do freelance design and for me personally, I decided I no longer wanted to be at a big corporation. I’m an entrepreneur at heart and always have been - Method enabled that to flourish in me but I was ready for a change. In the fall of 2019 the idea started really taking off. I had to make a decision of whether or not I was going to take a full-time gig someplace else, while Sally was looking for her next opportunity at great companies. But Sally and I truly felt we were onto something here. I really want this for my dog. And if nothing came out of it - at least I’d have a really great product I trusted for my 6 year old French bulldog who has massive allergies.

So we just said: Let's do it. I trust her implicitly. She trusts me implicitly. And we felt that there was a big unmet need. So in the fall of 2019 we started answering questions like “How do we trademark a brand? How do we build the vision for it?” We built a war room out of my guest room, and had all these poster boards filled with pictures. One of them you'll actually see on our website now: It was a dog with its hair waving like Beyonce. That became the vision of the brand: a premium beauty brand for dogs.

But we weren't going to sell lipstick for dogs. Sally and I both have been using clean beauty products for years. We shop at places like Credo and we love brands like Ilia - So that became our inspiration. On one of our “trend trips” to LA, outside the Credo store, we noticed that they had dog water bowls by the door. That was a lightbulb moment for us: Not only should we take inspiration from these brands, but why not create something for the Credo customer too? That took us in a whole new direction in terms of where we’d want to sell it. We want Rowan to feel like a beauty brand, and we're going to act like a beauty brand. We‘re going to be clean and we're going to hold ourselves to the highest standards.

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From there, we started working with a clean beauty chemist, and we used the Credo standards for Human Clean Beauty as a North star. A vet dermatologist then came into the business and she's helped us triangulate clean products for the pet world. We just kept moving and eventually launched our products on our own “direct to dog” site.

December 2020 was our official launch, and that was challenging in its own right amidst a global pandemic. Getting any type of bottle to put a liquid in was almost impossible because everyone's putting hand sanitizer and hand soap in them. Also - launching during the holidays, could have been the worst decision for a lot of businesses because you have no idea how to forecast anything, but the timing gave us a lot of traffic and eyeballs. We were able to secure some great press out of the gates, especially around gift giving - which helped us pave the path for 2021. We later closed a seed round in March - and that’s where we are today!

Was fundraising a part of the plan since the beginning?

We wanted to fund it ourselves to get it up and running, to make sure we had a proof of concept. We do see a lot of people, especially in the Bay area, who raise well before launch - but they dilute their ownership significantly in the process. And for Sally and I, this isn't about making money. It isn't about scaling fast and exiting.

We're not super young, we're in our forties and fifties. So for us, Rowan is a passion. It’s about creating something that we can be proud of. So we really wanted to make sure that we had something strong before anybody else came into the business. And most importantly, for me, I wanted to make sure that we could test and learn and fail and test and learn and fail without having to ask for permission.

We always had a plan to raise money at some point, but it was never going to be the crazy millions of dollars that come with all the strings and stress attached. A lot of successful brands have done that. But for us, that wasn't what this is about. This is about building a really successful business and brand for the long haul.

We live in the Bay area - where the cost of living is high. So we knew that at some point, we might want to take a little money to pay ourselves salaries. Demand has been encouraging since launch coupled with some great press coverage and potential omni-channel opportunities. Things accelerated quickly - and that’s when an investor we had a previous deep connection to via Method reached out. They're a triple bottom line investor: They believe in environmental and social activation behind brands. So for us, it was a perfect fit: We trust them and they share our same values. 

Where is your focus today then? Are you iterating on products? Or focusing more on the distribution and growth?

We're going to be iterating a little bit on the products - because we're now past the pilot launch phase. We’re currently focused on moving from smaller runs to much larger runs to scale up. We're also looking at extensions to the core. In the fall, we’ll be launching a very obvious extension to the core: When you have shampoos..... you usually have a conditioner! So we're rounding out the core, and staying really focused on two things:

1. Omni-channel
2. Product
   

On omni-channel: There will be a shift in focus on distribution in the back half of the year. You'll see us focusing on where a beauty brand at this stage might live and where a clean beauty consumer might shop.

For product: Sally and I are product people. We worked at Method and we are absolutely about innovation. We're being very strategic and choiceful with what we're doing. Our partner and our vet dermatologist, Dr. Anthea Schick enables us to take this brand in some really cool places. So a lot of our product innovation is looking at healthy skin and coat, but we're never going to be the “scientific brand”. We're always going to be fun and approachable: Think veterinary and human science coming together.

Being that your grooming products are essential to dogs - How are you thinking about retention and LTV? Are those core metrics to your business?‍

We do see that type of consistency in buying behavior for the people who are educated on how to take care of your dog. But it's actually surprising how many people don't know that. There's a lot of misinformation, even in the veterinary community. So that’s one of the things that as a brand we're really trying to do: Educate.
Some people don't know how often to bathe their dogs. Some are doing it every three months, others are doing it every six weeks... they don't really know. We're trying to help people understand that it’s important to their health to bathe them every week. I personally used to bathe my dog once a month, but a dermatologist educated me on the fact that my dog was picking up environmental allergens that are exacerbating her skin allergy. I can’t control it all through food, I needed to do both: Food & grooming. And it's not about selling us - We push you to find a product that works, but stick with it and really use it every week. 

In addition, we see Rowan as a lifestyle brand. We're not going to just be about the shampoo, we're going to be about other things that accentuate and amplify a dog's life. So now we pay attention to what happens in between baths, such as products that remove odor and dirt, or even just have a nice fragrance. So the dog doesn't smell like a stinky dog. The lifetime value is really good with dogs. A lot of times people look at Pet categories and Baby categories as having similar gateways into a lifestyle brand choice. Today, I’ve now seen the two categories. And what's really interesting about Pet is that unlike Babies, pets don’t grow as much! The baby becomes a toddler, and then a kid and a teenager. So you don't normally stick with the brands all the way through adulthood. But with dogs: Once you find a brand that works for your dog, especially on food and grooming, you tend to stick with it. We're already seeing some good repeat purchasers, but time will tell. Will we get to keep those people for the average life of a dog? But that's not why we built the business. We didn't go into it to take advantage of LTV. That sounds great, but that only comes if the products work. The product has to deliver, it doesn't matter how great the brand is.

How do you judge the efficacy of your product? What are the key metrics that you're obsessing over as a business owner?

First and foremost we prototyped and built a beta group on Facebook before we launched. We had the right mix of ages, demos and dog types. Initially, it was about 100 people and that grew to be about 800 people - and we still have that group. That group helped build the brand. They advised us on product, pricing and we even let them in on the brand name. We ended up sending out sample kits over the summertime before we launched, got feedback, and modified our products based on the feedback.

But yes I look at reviews, and we look at all kinds of incentives to get people to write reviews, good or bad. We use Stamped and I read the reviews in real time and often directly reach out to consumers. I want to make sure that we're not just getting a star or a click, but some commentary.

What do people really like? Today, we're getting really good reviews. That's great. But what specifically do you love? Do people love the dispenser? Do they love the fragrance? That’s more useful to know. And right now - we're not getting a lot of negative reviews, but that's scary. Because negative reviews really help you figure out what's going to keep people from coming back.

My advice to people who are doing this: Analytics are great, but there's a lot of nuance to the color underneath those analytics that you can’t afford to lose sight of.

A good real life example - We recently received a really nice review from a customer who also added that they were a little disappointed that the bottle had a little bit of a lower fill. And that happens during a pilot sometimes. So of course, we reached out and got them another bottle. They were thrilled. And now they write back and tell us how happy they are and telling friends about us.

I also have a funny Jeff Bezos story on this:

When I worked at Method, we had a moment where a consumer was upset because one of our products was no longer for sale on Amazon. Amazon had discontinued it. So the customer sent a note to Jeff Bezos and he responded to it and all of a sudden we got a PO for the product again. That’s something I will never forget because he’s still taking time to read these emails and still cares to make a change based on one person. At Method, it was great because we got more volume, but more importantly it also gave this woman her product back. The customer matters. So when you look at just analytics and stats in silos, you average everything out. That one consumer becomes hundreds and they're all kind of normalized and you lose that color. In a digital world, it's easy to do that. So that's one of the things we're trying to figure out, but it is challenging.

The way you speak about iteration reminds me of Ning Li, the founder of Typology. They obsess over testing and only keep SKUs on their store if they become hits. How do you do that at your scale?

You can find ways where you don't have to do minimum production runs that are thousands of units. Finding small pilots, working with contract manufacturers who can do small runs; having a small lab yourself or doing it all in house. That's the way you do it. And for us, that's going to be critical because we're going to test our way into some categories that have never been touched for dogs before.

Thanks Michelle for all your wisdom. I’m excited for what’s to come next!