TOP CEO: Bramble Berry - "The Flood" (with Anne-Marie Faiola)

Ben Kaplan  00:00

Hey, this is TOP CEO. The show about CEOs making tough decisions featuring CEOs from startups, scale ups and fortune 500 enterprises. TOP CEO is a business school case study telling the story behind the story, and what you can learn from it from those who have faced the fire and come out the other side. Welcome to the TOP CEO podcast.

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The Detective  00:30

Imagine you're the CEO of Bramble Berry, driven by the love of the craft, you don't just provide the ingredients to make soap, candles and cosmetics. You also teach people how to make them. This is how your business works offer a comprehensive selection of superior handcraft supplies combined with an exceptional customer service and educational resources that cater to both hobbyist and small business owners. As your company grows, you face a series of challenges. One, a devastating flood that wipes out your entire warehouse inventory

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Anne-Marie  01:09

25% of it was gone like that myself $280,000 with

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The Detective  01:14

a website transition that cost you 40% of your Google traffic overnight.

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Anne-Marie  01:20

Literally within a day 40% of our traffic to bring completely evaporated three,

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The Detective  01:25

a global pandemic that disrupts your supply chain and forces you need to adapt quickly

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Anne-Marie  01:31

to get anything in. Nobody can come to work right in any of our factory in any of the factory design.

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The Detective  01:39

The question is, how will you navigate through these trials and transform them into opportunities for growth and success? This is exactly the story of Anne-Marie Faiola, the founder and leader of Bramble Berry. This is ‘The Flood’.

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Ben Kaplan  02:03

Emery take me through the moment when you discovered that you had a successful business, it's a three to $5 million business and where you're storing all of your inventory. something shocking has happened. Take me through the moments. What was that? Like? What did you discover when this flood hits your warehouse?

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Anne-Marie  02:22

Literally and figuratively applied? Yes. So Bramble Berry has been in business for a few years. At this point, we are fulfilling all of our orders and shipping all of our orders out of our Bellingham warehouse in about 10 to 12 employees and like every day is hard and stressful. But like I had no idea how hard and stressful it could get our landlord at the time needed to do a little bit of building work. And so he said, Hey, I'm just going to do some building work, just a little hole right here that and then it rained really hard that night in that hole that was in the floor, let all of the water that should have been going down, say the alley up into our building. And of course, as a new business, I didn't even think about where my inventory was being stored, right? It's on the floors, that computers are all on the floors, right? Because that's back when you actually had computers that were like big. They're all the floors. And we walk in the next day. And there's just water up to here. And I sell raw materials to manufacture soap and toiletries. There is nothing that you can salvage from that once it's been touched by water that should have been, you know, underground and going through an alley. You can't sell that stuff. It's not cosmetic grade anymore.

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Ben Kaplan  03:30

Just give us a perspective, how much inventory was there, how much in the I don't know, units or dollar terms to sort of walk in in the morning and see what has happened

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Anne-Marie  03:39

is like 25% of all of our inventory. So like think about bottles and lotion bases and soap bases. And just it's right. So we're stacking it as high as we can. But all the whole first layer is all gone. And the warehouse itself wasn't all that big, maybe 2000 3000 square feet, and so 25% of it was gone. And the landlord said, Not my problem, you should have been stacking on pallets, and the insurance company said it is the landlord's problem. We're not paying for it. And meanwhile, I had to figure out how to replace all that inventory. And so that I just put it all on credit cards and hoped against wild hopes and prayers that I would be able to pay it off over time.

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Ben Kaplan  04:21

And you had to replace it. You had orders still coming in that you needed to ship and fulfill what did you do? You took the products that were up higher, affected by water and you ship those and then he tried to quickly go back to manufacturing for everything else.

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Anne-Marie  04:33

Yeah. And then we out of stock stuff, right? You know, hey, we're so sorry. It's out of stock. But that's how when I was 27 years old, I found myself $282,000 in debt. I mean, that's at 27 years old, like there is no one coming to save you at 27 years old when you've got to earn $82,000 in debt because of what seems like bad business choices.

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Ben Kaplan  04:53

It is but it's not your fault. Is it your fault? Did you beat yourself up over that or how did you manage to move on because at that point You're 27 years old. I mean, also, you've built a three to $5 million business you employ real people, it's a lot to be excited about. Not a lot of people would foresee that your landlord make a hole. And that's going to threaten the existence of your business. So what was the emotion of this? Are you just a person who can move on and you can compartmentalize. So I don't know, if I could I be pretty mad. I think

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Anne-Marie  05:19

anger is very galvanizing. And so I got angry, I was angry at the landlord primarily. So I directed all my anger at him. And then I got really angry and decided I never wanted to be under a landlord again. And so I went, and I found my very first warehouse that I could buy. And I sort of calling banks to see if anybody would loan me that $880,000 to help me buy this warehouse, because I didn't want to deal with that landlord. But I also never want to deal with another landlord. Again, it's one thing when you make your own mistakes, and you own it and go, Okay, I own it. I learned from it, thank goodness, I can come back from it. But it's another thing when it's not your fault. And then you just have to recover.

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Ben Kaplan  06:00

To get back to this pivotal moment in the existence of the company, you have this flood, you've wiped out 25% of your inventory, it causes you to go a couple $100,000 in debt, did you even consider like, I've got to rethink this, or I've got to do this a different way? Or can I continue? Did that enter your mind at that point? Or no, I know, you were mad? Did you just get mad and work harder to prove your dumb landlord wrong? Or how did you think about it,

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Anne-Marie  06:25

I can see it right, like I could see the path and I can see the path. Now interestingly enough, we're in another really weird kind of Antoine Cava doldrum. But we're in a weird time right now with the way the economy is and the supply chain and the labor market. So we're in a weird time right now to I can see the path, I know exactly why I do what I do every day that's to inspire creativity and help people lead their best lives, no matter how they're doing it. And so I can feel it, I could feel it back then. And I can feel it now. So you could feel

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Ben Kaplan  06:53

that there was a purpose in this, you could see what the company would become then had enough because of that vision or that intrinsic feel for it that you felt this was a temporary bump in the road, though a major bump, not a death sentence for the company.

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Anne-Marie  07:09

I didn't think it was a death sentence for the company, because I can always so I at the time was still selling soap on the weekends, right. So the way that Bramble Berry got started, is that I would load up I would make soap every evening. And then I would do Bramble Berry, kind of from nine to five during the day. And then I would make soap. And then every weekend when there was a craft show, which is about seven months out of the year, I would drive to the craft show. And I would sell soap on the weekends sleep in my car, usually because there was never any money to actually pay for a hotel. And then I would drive back on either Sunday night or Monday morning, do Bramble Berry and do that all over again. And so I always knew that I could take care of myself. But at that point there was employees to worry about right, I have to make sure that they have a they have a plan. And so I could do my back of napkin calculations and say, Okay, I just need to sell this much every single day. And then I can afford to pay my employees.

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Ben Kaplan  08:02

Were there other sacrifices you had to make in the growth of what else did you have to do? I don't know what point just like make ends meet, make payroll, save money, what else were the kinds of things you did? Well, in

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Anne-Marie  08:13

addition to obviously maxing out every single credit card I had, I didn't go out to eat for seven years not not once never went out to eat at a restaurant not once in seven years unless my parents were paying for it. And my parents were pretty horrified still that I was an entrepreneur at the time. Like there was three Christmases in a row that I didn't have heat because I didn't have I couldn't afford heat. For most of all those three years, I had a fixer upper house that when you pushed on the walls, you could see the floor, you can see like the ground outside. So there was a lot of things that I didn't have that were like creature comforts. But I have this big passion. Like I knew what I was doing was really valuable for people, people would write me and tell me it made a difference in our lives. And just one of those a week was enough to keep me going. And also, I didn't really know any different. Like, it's not like I had been comfortable before and I got uncomfortable. I hadn't ever been comfortable.

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Ben Kaplan  09:09

Sometimes when I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs, there's a school of thought that says okay, for whatever your business is going to be like look out there and look at the market, find a gap in the market, find some whitespace find some things that you have a unique, maybe unfair advantage to go exploit and then exploit that leverage that take advantage of that. Whether you're passionate about it or not. It's just an opportunity. But the problem is, if you're not passionate about it, and you don't feel it, you don't believe it, you don't think like Gosh, this company or this product or this brand audit exists in the world it bugs me that it doesn't exist then when lots of other things happen, like a flood, like some other unforeseen thing, which we'll talk about later, too. It's hard to get through it if you don't have that passion, but it seems like that wasn't an issue for you because the passion was the field.

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Anne-Marie  09:56

I always had that bigger why right? I believe my my my mission in life is to help people live their full lives with joy and creativity. And so yeah, I have that passion. And there's lots of things that I might like people telling me to do all the time. Well, why don't you just do this, right? Like, why don't you just make soap and sell it to whole foods instead of like selling all these raw materials and teaching people how to make soap. And right now, that's just not my passion. My passion is teaching people how to make soaps and candles and lotions and skincare and that kind of thing, and then selling the ingredients to do that. It's right now, it's not having a mass produced line of products in Sephora. So I hear it all the time. Like why don't you just do this? Why don't you just do this?

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The Detective  10:42

Anne-Marie face the ultimate business challenge when a catastrophic flood decimated 25% of her inventory. Her world turned upside down. She was plunged into $282,000 in debt, and her unwavering determination and unshakable passion were tested like never before. Undaunted, Anne-Marie rose to the occasion. She pushed her limits, maxed out her credit cards and fought for every order. And just when it seemed that all hope was lost, she took a leap of faith, buying her own warehouse, and breaking free from the shackles of landlords. The Flood was not the sole obstacle in the Bradbury Odyssey, numerous unexpected twists and turns lay ahead.

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Ben Kaplan  11:33

Let's get kind of back up to speed. So this happened about 10 years ago now and Bramble Berry life when did you start the company? How old were you? I think in your background, you've been selling soap since you were a kid. So you knew about how to make it. You were an expert in it, and you knew what other people who make soap or cosmetics might need. But take me through to get to this point. What did you do? When did you start the company? How did you get it to a point where a lot of people never make it to that kind of three or $5 million point we have a real business and you have product market fit? Oh, absolutely.

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Anne-Marie  12:02

So I was actually never supposed to be a entrepreneur. I have my degree in psychology with an emphasis in corrections. And I was going to be a correctional officer. So I worked for a police department for a few years down in Lacey Washington, I worked for medium security prison. And then I worked for a minimum security prison as a correctional officer, I really, really believed that I could help change that system, right? People don't just end up in jail, because they're bad people, they end up in jail because systems have failed. Society has failed. They didn't have a great family life, you know, you name it. And I thought that I would be able to help that system. And as soon as I got into it, I realized that that was pretty misguided. And I actually wasn't a great correctional officer because I believe that people are innately good. I think everybody has it in them to be great. And so I was coming home really demoralized. And I was starting to make soap every night because I had been making soap and selling it since I was about 12 years old.

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Ben Kaplan  13:01

And how old are you at this point in the story?

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Anne-Marie  13:03

Oh, at that point. I'm like, 1819 ish, like, and I am. Because I got my four year degree at 17. I kind of went through school pretty fast. So I got my degree from a small liberal arts college in Washington state when I was 17. Oh, this

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Ben Kaplan  13:17

is a college or university at 70. Wow. That's that's incredibly that's incredibly early. Me. Yeah,

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Anne-Marie  13:21

me and hard work and grit and persistence didn't exactly start when I became an entrepreneur. It started pretty young. Like I had a Franklin Covey planner when I was in ninth grade, right, like,

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Ben Kaplan  13:30

Okay, so the type you are is pretty high in the alphabet by B type A. So you had this vision of how the world works. Maybe seeing working in prisons, you had a different view, kind of a jolt, and then you were making soap and how did that lead to to become a business?

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Anne-Marie  13:43

Well, as soon as I started making soap, but then I realized that there was probably a bigger calling for me out there. So I quit my job. I started selling soap at farmer's markets. And then at like the Mount Vernon Tulip Festival in Washington State. And the very first weekend I sold $1,500 worth of soap via and it was cash, right? You know, it's just all cash, you're taking cash in which cash is cash is pretty nice to get. And then I realized, you know what, I can help other women or men quit their jobs that they don't love. And I can teach them how to make soap. That's what I can do. I can teach everyone to be creative, because everyone's creative. They just need someone to teach them. So I put $15,000 on a credit card and ordered like 10 different skews. So 10 different supplies, and started with five fragrances, two soap bases and three soap molds and coded my very first website, go to the next couple actually, and started trying to get orders online. And that was back when the internet was in its infancy. Amazon was losing 25 cents on every dollar that they sold. And so it was just the Wild West and so then I just built it when order at a time.

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Ben Kaplan  14:54

What do you think do you credit to get past those initials or was it just determination in this sense? The purpose even though your focus was on selling materials, so people can make soap you had a greater purpose of empower entrepreneurs, what was it that was sort of powering this? Is it you don't know what you don't know? And that's good, right? You don't know all the million ways you could fail. And so you just don't worry about it, you just go, what was it that kind of got you through all of those times just let you scale the business?

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Anne-Marie  15:18

Well, what's interesting is I always wanted, I mean, I got into corrections, so I could help people. And so the idea of helping people create lives that they love, was always there. It's just corrections wasn't the way to do it. And so I looked at Bramble Berry, when I found it Bramble Berry as a way to help people create lives, they love, whether it's through self employment, because they're going to start making and selling so or just having a creative outlet to do with their kid having a creative outlet, so they can make better products for themselves and their family and neighbors. It didn't really matter to me, so long as I was helping people lead lives of joy and authenticity. And so that was really what helped keep me going every day, it was the people that said, Ha, I made this and I loved it. And it was such a good experience. Or I made this and I loved it. And it was such a good experience. And now I have a great part time or full time income, that helps keep my kid in diapers, that helps send my kid to summer camp that helps support this local nonprofit and our community. You name it. I've heard every amazing story out there. And that's what keeps me going

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Ben Kaplan  16:18

Bramble Berry Was anyone doing this at the time? I mean, you're not obviously just selling soap at this point, you're selling the raw materials to manufacture soap and other toiletries. Was it just wide open space? or were there other people doing it? What was your competitive dynamics? Are you thinking about that?

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Anne-Marie  16:32

For sure? Yeah, there was other people that had the same idea as me, which makes a lot of sense, right? Like, I'm not the only person out there making soap going, you buy coconut oil? How do you make soap right? So there was other competitors that I had, I call them I call them fellow vendors. And but very quickly on the way Bramble Berry differentiated itself was the I have a huge passion for teaching. I love to teach, I love to explain. And I honed that into like a very bizarre talent, which is I can make stuff with my hands and talk the whole time, like the whole time. And it's such a weird, bizarre talent early on Bramble Berry really distanced itself from the fellow vendors slash competitors. By being the truth and knowledge for the industry. We were the source of truth and knowledge for the industry, this trusted source of truth and knowledge. And so I was writing blog posts, I was helping out in chat rooms, we started soap queen.tv, very early on, which is our YouTube channel that has over 40 million views on it now, of people watching me teach them how to make soap. And so we started doing that very early on realizing that nobody really like gets up in the morning and looks at their shower and thinks, did this bar of soap get here? I wonder if I could make it myself, right? Like you just don't. So when people are searching for that, we want to be the ones that come up. And we want to be the ones that teach you how to make soap.

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Ben Kaplan  17:54

After the flood, you invest in having your own warehouse, as you've told the story that you go through 13 lenders who say no, we're not going to give you the 800 and some $1,000 to buy the warehouse. But the 14 says yes, you do that you get that done? And what happens from there? How do you build back up the business and get out of debt, replace your 25% of lost inventory, what happens there that kind of fuels the growth,

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Anne-Marie  18:19

those are those are really hard years, and they weren't fun. They were rigorous. They were looking at the profit and loss by actual line items every single month, and actually looking at it and going okay, this was a good month, we stayed in budget or this was a bad month. And if it was a bad month, and we did not make the money, money has to come from someplace, right? So it's coming from me in some way, shape, or form. Either I am loaning the company money or I'm just not taking a paycheck. So I didn't take a paycheck for the first seven years. And then then it was that summers, I wouldn't take a paycheck. But then the president of the company who joined Bramble Berry, not long after we were founded, he started not taking a paycheck in the summer, too. And so he really, he really believed in what we were doing. And so we both wouldn't take paychecks in the summer. And that's how we made it through every summer. And I think there's some other Amber who is still with us today during product development. I think she also didn't take paychecks in the summer. Like I had a lot of I had team members that really believed in what we were doing. They saw the bigger why and so they also sacrificed and so I'm I'm so grateful to them for one believing in me right like who what did I know what I was doing? And to also believing the cause enough that they would that they would, they would also sacrifice, they would also save up their money.

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Ben Kaplan  19:37

What started turning the corner of making strategic sacrifices here and there, you're setting a vision that other key people are agreeing to make sacrifices to the business grows and the business scales. What causes that up and what allows you to kind of turn the corner or at least into the next challenge.

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Anne-Marie  19:54

Sure. Well, I mean, the Internet helps right like the internet gets better and like when I first started stripe did not exist in like Google didn't even really have much of a search engine, there was like no way to get your information out. And so now, it's as easy as like getting you can, you can set up a web page and get credit card processing in a day, right? Like the Internet has really blown up.

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Ben Kaplan  20:18

Okay, so suddenly, all these things that you're a bit ahead of your time, you're trying to sell direct to people, you have a fulfillment business, but technology is advancing tools are advancing, you mentioned something else implicitly, which is your love of teaching. And instructing actually starts to get rewarded by search engines, because search engines like content and content that people like search engines like, and that starts propelling the business. So the internet and I imagine SEO traffic from this thought leadership you're doing and soap making and content you're creating starts propelling you and allow you to get more customers.

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Anne-Marie  20:56

Absolutely. The thought leadership was a really big deal there. And I wrote, I've written three books on how to make soap there, the three best selling books and soap making in the world, which is really great and cool story publishing, which is now Hachette books published all three of them. And so that helped also, but yeah, I wrote this blog called The Soap Queen blog, which we've now transitioned over onto the Bramble Berry.com page instead of being on a separate page. But I wrote this open blog for 15 years, giving free content away, right, like, I would teach you how to make soap you don't have to buy from me, and you could still learn it all. And eventually people buy from people they like, but people buy from people they trust.

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Ben Kaplan  21:33

And prior career, I was an author, I wrote a number of books, kind of an education, personal finance base, and sometimes you meet other authors where you'd meet people in publishing. And they'd say, Well, I know the secret of this, one of those secret of my case is how to win called scholarships. In your case, it's how to make soap they'd stop, let's say, You know what, read my book, go to my book, get my product do that. And I never understood that. Because to me, it was the opposite, which was, I'm going to be as helpful as I possibly can. I'm gonna tell everything I know, I'm going to do that. And if I do that, one, they might tell someone else and say, Hey, this guy really knows his stuff, you should check it out. But to say, Wow, I chatted with him for 20 minutes, I learned this. Imagine if I got his book. Imagine if I got this. I got so much value for this without even paying think. Imagine what I do. And people never thought like that. That was like a foreign. It's like, no, hold it back. So you can sell it. And I always did the opposite. And it sounds like you did the same.

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Anne-Marie  22:22

I did the same. Yeah. And then of course, that was great, because now everybody's giving everything away for free. And so that was truly cutting edge. And that was before that was happening. But now you can find out. I mean, if I want to learn how to make ravioli, right now I can find 100 videos on that, like you could make everything about anything right now.

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Ben Kaplan  22:41

And then as the business is growing, it's being driven by this content engine, you had your ranking higher in Google and search engines, all this is happening. But there's another challenge on the horizon. And that involves not too long ago, I think about four years now, where you transition your website platform. And that's critical, because that's your storefront, right? If you don't have physical stores, this is everything. And you have a situation where it's almost like in a digital sense, you almost have another flood, what happened, what happens with your website? Why were you changing platforms? What disruption did that cause that you kind of had to had to problem solve all over

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Anne-Marie  23:19

again, one of the interesting things about Bramble Berry is we sell the raw materials to service a lot of different products. If you want to make skincare, we've got everything you need. If you want to make solid shampoo bars, we have everything you need, if you want to make blush, because you think that your blush formulation is the best ever we have everything you need. Because of that we have about 1800 products that we can sell in between five and eight different SKU variants. So imagine this insane product catalog of what's essentially pretty cool chemicals, but useful chemicals. And so like a website like Shopify, it's awesome for a startup. Not so awesome. If you're running a pretty complicated business with multiple warehouses and multiple SKUs that go into multiple sizes that could go into different kits, but then also get into manufacturing and all this stuff. So we went out in search of a real platform, a real shopping cart that would let us grow because my I've always wanted to grow the company, I want to be $100 million company and really employ lots of people all over the United States and help bring this concept of making your own DIY cleaning products, shampoo, skincare, all of that to the masses. And so I said, Okay, what's going to take me there? So I found a shopping cart platform, Salesforce, it's a commerce cloud platform and went okay, you know, that's way more than I need right now. But it's not way more than what I'm going to need in the future. So I paid I've spent we spent two years and I paid a lot of money for a variety of different experts to go in and build me a new website based on this shopping these on this shopping cart which is like the engine that draw like is underneath the hood. At and on February 14, we about four years ago, we launched that website. And actually five years ago, February 14 2018, we launched that website. And literally within a day, all of our Google traffic evaporated 40% of our traffic to Bramble Berry.com, completely evaporated.

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Ben Kaplan  25:21

And it was immediate. It wasn't even like a gradual, slow, low, it was boom, it's gone,

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Anne-Marie  25:25

gone. And that was because the company that we had hired to help with that SEO that really important search engine optimization work. Instead of redirecting traffic from all these years and years and years and years of content building, instead of redirecting it to the new pages that were actually like, like for like, they just told the Google spider that Google search engine crawler, hey, if someone goes to Bramble Berry.com, forward slash how to make lotions forward slash what emulsifying wax to choose forward slash four slash, just send them to Bramble Berry.com.

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Ben Kaplan  25:59

Oh, they just send me the homepage, all of that, which is going to kill time on site, everything else, because people are gonna go to the link, go there and say, This isn't what I want, and they're gonna leave, and Google's gonna record that departure and their time on site was low. And basically, Google's gonna think you don't have what they're looking for. So rank you lower.

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Anne-Marie  26:16

So all of a sudden, our sales dropped 40% in one single day. I mean, like, at this point about over 100 employees, it's not a joke, like I have to like payroll is coming. Winter is coming, payroll is coming. And then I also have to figure out what's going wrong. And then I have to pay to fix it. So five years ago, I burned through 100% of Bramble Berry savings went into debt again. And like because I had to keep the company afloat during that time period. Like, again, you do not bounce back from 40% loss in sales and not lay anybody off. We didn't lay anybody off. We kept everybody even though nobody was busy. And then we still have the same amount of SEO work to do. It's not like anybody cares that Google has dropped all your your rankings.

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Ben Kaplan  27:04

And you can't really call up Larry or Sergey at Google and say, excuse me, just a small you know how to incompetent SEO shop didn't for the traffic, you might just giving us that traffic back. You can't do anything, all you can do is try to fix it and try to see if Google will come back.

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Anne-Marie  27:18

And then we still had to figure out what was going wrong. All we knew is traffic was down. We didn't know why. Why is traffic down, we give it about right. And then of course, to add insult to injury, that firm was still the firm that did the shoddy job was still billing us for the work that they had done. So that was all very stressful. And it took a good year and a half actually to rebuild all that Google traffic and that Google relevancy and the you know, the top of mind stuff for Google took about a year and a half. And then that was right in time for the pandemic.

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Ben Kaplan  27:50

Okay, okay. You stuck with it. You had been through difficulties before this is just a nother difficulty different names a little bit more digital. But you got through one flood you can get through a digital flood, okay, you get through it. Pandemic comes in, what was the effect of the pandemic on your business? Because I can imagine multiple effects of that people are staying at home, people are doing more online commerce people are maybe have some more time on their hands. What was the effect on the business? Was it an increase? Or was it a decrease?

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Anne-Marie  28:18

So it was good and bad. So here we spend a year and a half, like just building back. I mean, in it, like every week, it I'm literally looking at the president of the company, Norman who's been with the company this whole time, you know, didn't take the paychecks. You know, 10 years ago, in the summers, he's still with the company. We're just looking at each other and gotta love

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Ben Kaplan  28:35

Norman by like, Norman, if you're listening to this. I love Norman Norman. Thank you. Thank you, Norman. Like,

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Anne-Marie  28:40

you know, we're looking at each other and parallels come in and this is just five years ago, payroll is coming? Are we going to be able to do it? What are we not going to pay? Can we put off the UPS bill? Can we put off this bill? How are we going to do this. So we're just barely climbing out of that. And then we're hearing about this thing and China Right. And, and then all of a sudden, the stay at home orders went into place in Washington State. And I had to figure out how to get my and they let the stay at home orders were literally do not drive on the road. Every single employee at Bramble Berry had a special license that we got from the Office of Emergency Management so that we could drive on the roads during that time period. Because literally everyone and in Washington State was stay at stay say stay home,

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Ben Kaplan  29:24

meaning there could be an uptick in demand but you have fulfillments at a warehouse physically that has to be there and you've got to get your people there to fulfill this. Even though you're an online business, you have physical place you need to be

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Anne-Marie  29:39

and we have to keep them safe, right because in the early days of the pandemic, there's no vaccine no one actually knows how you're getting infected right like for all we know the virus is literally a heat seeking missile that's going around corners like people are scared to come to work. Masks remember were in very short supply. And they thought that distance you know greater physical distance with people was actually the real thing. So we were literally making people work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So we could have half the amount of people working at any given time, which meant, of course, we're highly inefficient, because our warehouse is optimized to work at between 42 and 48 people at any given time, and we only have 25. So they're covering twice as much ground, you know, walk in like so, in the same time that we have people sort of going, Oh, wait, we won't be home for well, what can we do with these kids? Let's make sure we are then when facing supply chain problems, can't get anything in, nobody can come to work, right in any of our factory in any of the factories we buy from, like we have a soap maker, we have a soap manufacturing plant that we work with in California, and California also was under stay home stay safe orders and they didn't manage to make it in. So like we have supply chain problems, we can't get anybody into work to start with. People are scared if they do come to work. And then if they do come to work, it's inefficient. So we, we just chipped away at it, we made it through that time period. That was really stressful. And that was really hard. And what ended up happening was we did sell a lot of soap making kits, lots of people did try to learn how to make soap or learn how to make bath fizzies or learn how to make lotions. And now the interesting issue that we're going into right now there is that hey, you know what economies were right. inflation's been really hitting people hard. Wages are an odd thing right now. So people aren't feeling like they have more money. But if they do have money, you know what they're doing. They're revenge traveling, they are not spending time at home making so so now we have a different opposite problem. We can get people to work supply chains are starting to kind of unravel. People know how to kind of live and work with COVID now, but people are really excited to be outside and traveling. So we have a whole different issue now. So it's you know, every every day new challenge when it when you're self employed person.

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The Detective  31:59

Anne-Marie has faced numerous challenges, including a flood and a major website platform change that led to a 40% drop in Google traffic. Through her passion for teaching and providing valuable content, she was able to grow her business and establish a positive reputation. When the COVID 19 pandemic hit, the business had to adapt to supply chain disruptions, employee safety concerns, and changing consumer behaviors. Anne-Marie's story emphasizes the importance of resilience, adaptation, and maintaining a customer centric approach in the face of adversity. But what does the future hold? For Bramble Berry?

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Ben Kaplan  32:43

So in terms of the business itself, you do about 25 to $30 million in revenue? Yeah. 25 to $30 million in revenue you have how many people do you employ?

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Anne-Marie  32:52

Were anywhere between 100 to 145. At any given time, it really just depends on the time of year and the mix of products that people are buying. Because obviously, like at Christmastime, people are buying a lot of gifts. So they're buying lots of kits, right? We're getting corporations that are gifting kits, and that kind of thing. And the labor for that takes a lot more. I see.

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Ben Kaplan  33:11

So it fluctuates, but about 150 people depend on you for their livelihood. You're a leader in the field, you're going to talk a lot of Google rankings of things like that. You're a thought leader as well. So you've come all this way, a remarkable story. And yet, you still have the next challenge. It's still coming. You don't ever really get complacent or you don't ever did you ever kick back. Do you ever get to kick back Emery and just sort of put your feet up and be like, I made it? I'm going to enjoy it. Now I did that? Or is it just the next challenge. And now people are revenge traveling. And you've got to find a way to bring more people the joy of making your own soap and you just do it?

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Anne-Marie  33:44

I do. Yeah, I just do it. Like with one of my children, I was back at work within three days. The other one was back at work within five days and brought brought her to work every single day while she was a baby. But it's not a hardship. I love it. I love my job. I love that it is hard. I love the challenge. It is a joy and a gift to be able to teach people how to make soap and I do not take it for granted. So every single day is hard. And it's a challenge. But I really feel so lucky. Like just so so lucky to live my calling.

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Ben Kaplan  34:15

Can you imagine yourself doing anything else?

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Anne-Marie  34:17

Now if I'm doing anything, I'm going to be a book editor or I'm going to be running a scuba diving shop someplace.

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Ben Kaplan  34:22

Okay, so those are a couple a couple other things. And where is this all headed for you? Where do you think you'll be? Where's this all headed for you? What is the vision? You know, you get through this little economic downturn recession, you keep growing you do what you've always done is just put one foot in front of another. Where are you going to be in 10 years?

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Anne-Marie  34:39

Oh my goodness, I love that question because I'm going to still be doing what I'm doing just in a bigger way and a bigger platform. So we're going to keep adding to what we already support. So like right now of skincare candles, haircare, those are all new categories, and we can do home cleaning, we can do pet products, all of that. But then one of the things I really want to do that I'm very passionate about is helping small All businesses manufacture their own products. Because right now, if you have a great idea for a product, but you live in an apartment in New York, where are you going to make this stuff? You know what I'm really good at, I'm good at making that stuff. And I'm good at warehousing. And I'm good at optimizing. So I really want to start doing private label manufacturing for small scale producers to do small runs for them. And then you know, be really, really cool is if I was able to warehouse their products and then pick and pack and fulfill their products. So give me you know, give me five or 10 years, it's a wide you know, building a GMP compliant facility, getting all that stuff up and running. That's a really big next thing, but that's my dream. I really want to help other entrepreneurs in even more ways to be efficient, get larger audiences and do what they're really good at.

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The Detective  35:48

an incredible journey of building Bramble Berry, a business born from Anne-Marie's passion for helping others live joyfully, and creatively recovery from Bramble Berry. she persevered through numerous challenges, including a devastating flood that wiped out their inventory, and a steep drop in web traffic due to poor SEO management during a platform migration. Despite these hardships, Anne-Marie's dedication and unwavering resilience propelled the business to new heights, securing its reputation as an industry leader, with 25 to $30 million in revenue and a workforce of around 145 people. As the COVID 19 pandemic brought new obstacles, Anne-Marie demonstrated her adaptability and commitment to her employees safety, guiding the business through supply chain disruptions and increased demand. With unshakable spirit, Anne-Marie envisions a bright future for Bramble Berry, expanding its product offerings, supporting small businesses through private label manufacturing, and empowering fellow entrepreneurs. Her story is a testament to the power of tenacity and the enduring human spirit as she continues to overcome adversity and forge a path towards success. This has been the flood and that is CASE CLOSED.