Birchbox

When I was in Boston with my wife, Alexa von Tobel, who started learn vest was part of her class.

Some people launched a lot of these subscription-based business while she was at business school, like Birchbox and Rent the Runway and Blue Apron.

These were all like peers of hers.

And so it just kind of getting that exposure showed me what you can do through business.

I then went on to build one of the streaming platforms in the UK, even before Netflix was doing streaming, and basically spent more than a decade in media and entertainment subscriptions.

And then I went to work for Birchbox, who recognized that while they could get people who understood beauty, who understood e-commerce, getting someone from a very, very strong subscription background could really, really help them grow their business.

And from that, I kind of transitioned into straight e-com.

But then in November last year, I came back to subscription and I'm absolutely loving it.

I think the things that make media subscription difficult, which is mostly around getting people to use the product because they paid for it, but it's actually about consumption.

That's the specific challenge for media subscriptions that you don't tend to find with physical product.

I mean, you do a little bit because certainly a Birchbox, like our primary reason for cancellation is what we would call sampled out, is that you had so much product and that you needed to take a break for a while.

So even there, there are parallels with it.

But I remember being on set with Katya Beecham.

She had Birchbox at the time.

Now she has Buff Beauty.

And we were together for like 13 hours a day for five weeks.

I worked a bit as an assistant buyer for a luxury brand conglomerate in Saudi.

And then I started working at Birchbox as a merchandiser there for their beauty.

The role reported into an e-comm manager and then the company globalized.

They made a lot of redundancies, unfortunately.

And so, yeah, so I just kind of kept finding these like little moments of like, okay, this involves like a bit of social.

I, after that went to Birchbox and was a community manager, which kind of straddled the social team, which again, brand new concept for brands and the customer service team.

And I really wanted to join their social team.

Unfortunately, again, bloated teams.

It's going out and buying a bunch of stuff, and then you return what you don't want.

There was Birchbox, there was this whole mid-2010.

Yes, I remember

that.

... um, it, it started small, but-

That, that's kind of like the model of Birchbox and, like-

Yes

... things like that, where they were getting the sample sizes of all of these, uh, different-