Andrew: Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart.
This is a place where I interview entrepreneurs about how they built their businesses. Almost all of them are about tech entrepreneurs, like the founders of Airbnb, Wikipedia, etc. But what I found is that when I occasionally sprinkle in someone who’s not a tech entrepreneur, the audience really connects with them. So, today I’ve got for you an actress who started a clothing line. I want to find out how she created it, how she made her sales, how she grew it, how she made it into a brand and how she got into the Wall Street Journal recently.
Her name is Cynthia Jamin. She is also a Mixergy fan, and she’s the founder of TwirlyGirl. They make a line of girls’ clothing that are fun to wear and twirl and really, frankly, I could tell you about it, but I think if you just checked it out you’ll really understand what makes these dresses so special. You can just see it at TwirlyGirlShop.com.
And this is interview is sponsored by Toptal. Later on I’ll tell you why if you need a developer, you’ve got to go to the top. Go to Toptal.com/Mixergy. It’s sponsored by KickoffLabs. I’ll tell you why later if you need to grow your mailing list, they’ve got a secret weapon that’s so powerful that you’re going to want to know about it. I’ll tell you everything about them.
But first, Cynthia, welcome.
Cynthia: Thank you. It’s so great to be here.
Andrew: Cynthia, I’ve got your IMDB page up here. You aren’t just like an actress. You were in “Friends.” You were in, “Veronica’s Closet,” which as a kid I used to watch because it came on after “Friends,” right? Kristi Alley would always wear those long jackets in that. Even when she was sweating, she would never take off the jacket. She would roll up the sleeves a little bit.
Cynthia: Absolutely. Yeah.
Andrew: I would watch it. You were on that. You were on “Just Shoot Me.” You were on “Growing Pains,” “Quantum Leap.”
Cynthia: Way back. Yeah.
Andrew: First of all, before I get into business, how did you get on so many shows–“ER?”
Cynthia: Well, it was the heyday of all those great sitcoms. I love comedy. That was more my preference was doing comedies and the sitcom genre because I came from theater and sitcoms, shooting in front of a live audience is very much like theater. It just felt very natural to me. But I didn’t go to college right away. I went right after high school, started going out and being an actress. I went on my own at 17.
Andrew: But why you? I used to live in Los Angeles and I’d see people with their stacks of headshots, with their effort. You know what I’m talking about, right?
Cynthia: Maybe I got so [inaudible 00:02:40]. You’d pay for a bathroom with all the–
Andrew: Yeah. Then they change their hair a little bit and they’d have to get another stack. Then they’d get a little bit of a soul patch and they have to do it again. But why did they not do it? Forget them. Why did you get on shows like “Will & Grace” and “Passions” and so many shows I see here? What was it about the way you approached it that helped you get on there? Was it just luck?
Cynthia: I think a lot of it was just being around the right people at the right time and also saying yes to every single opportunity. How I got “Friends” was because I did some offbeat crazy theater thing that I had one showcase piece in and had no idea who would ever go there, if anybody. And the creator of friends was there, Marta Kauffman and her husband happened to do the music for that show.
So, she was just seeing it and brought me in for the pilot and asked me to do a small little role on it and then it became a recurring character. So, my whole approach was about saying yes to every opportunity. That’s how I found my agent. That’s how I found everything. One thing led to another.
In those days–I don’t know what it’s like now because I haven’t been in it for a while–but in those days you would go from casting director to casting director and they would actually speak to each other. They would refer other people and once you got one job, it would look good for the next job and you’re only as good as your last job. One thing led to another and I just started on that route of all the little sitcoms that were happening at that time.
Andrew: And then you took a sewing class. Why did you take a sewing class?
Cynthia: Well, I kind of started where I met my husband on “Just Shoot Me.” It’s not like I knew he was going to be my husband but ended up my husband. We’ve been together. So, after I met him, I was also going to college. It took me like forever to get two years. I was about to go to UCLA when I got pregnant with my first daughter.
I decided, “I’m kind of good with this. I want to just be a stay at home mom,” and then took a sewing class, like maybe three or four years after that and slowly got out of the business. I still did a couple jobs when Roxy was still a baby. But then I just felt like I’m done. I don’t want to keep waiting for people to give me a chance to do what I love. I want to go out there and be a mom and see what else is out there for me.
So, yeah, I took a sewing class and just started making things for the girls. I had another baby at that time, Lola. So, I just liked creating things for them. I loved the instant gratification. Eventually I came in with this one dress, the reversible twirly dress and that kind of set a spark in me to keep making more things that the girls would really love.
Andrew: What was it about that? By the way, I’m looking at your husband. I don’t know why I didn’t IMDB him before.
Cynthia: He’s a sitcom writer.
Andrew: He’s impressive. “King of the Hill,” co-executive producer, 52 episodes; “Just Shoot Me,” co-executive producers, 33 episodes–there are a bunch of others. “Mystery Girls,” which I hadn’t seen.
Cynthia: That’s one you just kind of sweep under the rug. You do those for money. He’s doing “Maron” now, which is Mark Maron’s…
Andrew: Mark Maron’s show. Yeah.
Cynthia: Yeah. So, he has his show on IFC.
Andrew: He’s the executive producer of 34 of the episodes and then associate producer of one. What happened? Did he get a demotion in 2015 or did IMDB get it wrong?
Cynthia: That’s like you do different jobs as consulting in between the seasons when things are shooting. So, it’s just extra jobs.
Andrew: Wow. You guys really made it. I’m telling you, I used to live in LA. One of the reasons I left is it was very sad. Most people couldn’t do even a fraction of that.
Cynthia: Yeah. My husband has really been–he has a partner, Sivert, and they work together as a team. So, they’ve been working ever since I’ve known him. It really is–I think it’s based on talent and also a little luck. But yeah, very fortunate, I have to say. There are a lot of talented people that don’t get their break.
Andrew: So, what was it about the twirly dress that made you feel like, “This is something new, so exciting that my life is going to change course because of it?”
Cynthia: Well, it was more about people’s responses to it and the girls wearing them. It was more about that, the experience and the response. Once I started getting all this positive feedback–and I really did feel like there wasn’t anything like it out there, especially with the fabrics and the softness and appealing that they were very durable and you can throw them in the washing machine and really abuse them, because I’m not a precious type of person. I don’t like having to micro-manage things. So, I want to be able to be rough with it and still look great. It was more about that.
When I started getting all that feedback, we happened to get a little inheritance from a grandmother that had died and she wrote me out of the will, in the will, out of the will. Finally my dad just said, “I’m going to give you what she would have given you and be done with it.”
Andrew: Why did she write you in and out of the will so much?
Cynthia: I don’t know. It was kind of a mystery. But I didn’t question it too much. I think she was just maybe wondering about all the grandchildren she had and if she was going to give me this amount, then she would have to give these–
Andrew: I see. It wasn’t that she got into an argument with you all the time.
Cynthia: No, not at all.
Andrew: It seems like you had a tough childhood too.
Cynthia: Yeah.
Andrew: Do you feel comfortable talking about that?
Cynthia: No, not anymore.
Andrew: You’re saying you don’t feel comfortable talking about that?
Cynthia: I feel comfortable talking about it now. I think before maybe I didn’t want people to look at me differently, but now I own it in such a different way that I’m totally comfortable.
Andrew: What do you feel comfortable saying about it? I know that when we get off the entrepreneur superhero, everything works out perfectly, then that’s when the audience has–I don’t want to say breakthrough–but that’s when they start to see themselves and the interview has an impact on them. What do you feel comfortable saying? I read your story. I heard it. It was really impactful for me.
Cynthia: Yeah. As a girl, a young girl, a lot of girls are sexually abused when they’re really young. Even if it happens for one time, an inappropriate instance or it happens like me over a period of five years, it doesn’t really matter the length of time, it’s at the time that it happens, it’s so inappropriate that it really rocks your world and changes you forever and that kind of abuse, because it’s not something that you can walk up to somebody and say, “Look, they punched me in the eye,” or, “They hit me across the face and I have a bruise.” You can’t see what it looks like.
Andrew: This is a summer camp that someone got you in for free for. Then the whole summer, he would abuse you and then you’d come back the next year for more.
Cynthia: Well, it was kind of complicated because he was a friend of the family. So, it actually happened all year round. He lived in my aunt’s building. So, my mother was troubled at the time. She was an alcoholic for a while. She was 22 when she had me. She was a child herself. She didn’t have the right tools. She didn’t have the right support.
So, all this time, the focus was on my mother, so it was almost like, “Oh, thank god for this person to take care of Cindy so we don’t have to worry about it.” It was a whole different mentality at that time. Nobody would even have thought that this was happening. Nobody thought to question it either. So, it ended up happening that I met him at camp, but then when I came home, it was just kind of like this other home for me.
Andrew: How did you finally stop it?
Cynthia: Well, I didn’t really stop it. It was more my mother, who was in a treatment center, get a call one day saying that he wanted to take me to Canada. All of a sudden a light bulb went off like, “Oh my god, this isn’t happening but it’s happening and now I know I’m putting it together.” They let her out of the treatment facility, which kind of doesn’t happen and they confronted him.
He called my father saying my mother is crazy and, “Come get Cindy,” and then his plan was to get me back from my father, who kind of I never really had a lot of contact with but I wasn’t estranged from, he was just not in my life. He lived here in Los Angeles. So, he took me at 13 and that was it.
Andrew: So, your dad got you out of it when your mom finally realized what was going on.
Cynthia: Yeah.
Andrew: Wow. One of the things that I heard you say is that this is your way of–creating these dresses is a way of having the childhood experience and giving the childhood experience that you didn’t get to have, that was taken from you.
Cynthia: Right. It wasn’t a conscious thing. I think I fell into it with such an ease that I’ve never known before, even acting never happened that easily. I always felt like I was pushing against something to make something happen. This is just effortless and the designs poured out of me and the fabrics that I gravitated to were just life-affirming and joyous and beautiful and it just felt so like I was in my element.
And I didn’t really put my finger on it until maybe a few years later that I was actually living this childhood again through my children and through my company. And Twirly girl really is my third daughter. It has a life of its own at this point. But I treat it like it’s this entity that I care for and I nurture but also that I watch grow up because it really is taking off on its own.
Andrew: I’m such a cynic–it’s not cynic. I worry that I’m going to end up with bad information on Mixergy. So, unlike other interviewers that say, “I don’t anything about my guests. I’ll learn along with the audience.” I say to myself, “Is this really true? Do people like this? Is this dress really that great because what do I know about dresses?”
Cynthia: Right.
Andrew: So, I started Googling it. I see people like this website, GothamLove.com, which wrote this great long piece. You didn’t pay for that, right? I kept looking, “Is there an affiliate link for that?” There is not affiliate link.
Cynthia: No.
Andrew: The Wall Street Journal said it was the favorite of whoever it was they were talking about. I see the passion people have for this. I see where you got excited about it. The other thing I noticed is that you told Jeremy, our producer, was you didn’t just want to have a dress that was fun. You wanted it to do something, to be like wearing a toy.
Cynthia: Yeah.
Andrew: What do you mean?
Cynthia: It’s almost like when kids are in that space of exploring and just being a kid, everything is about what is this going to do. What experience can I have from this? I didn’t want it to just be another dress. I wanted it to be exciting for them to flip when they flip it it’s a whole different dress. It’s not just a different color. It’s whole different prints and patterns.
Andrew: By flip you mean like wear it inside out.
Cynthia: Yeah, it’s reversible. Then I have another dress that has wings attached to the back and it’s not a costume, but it borders on a costume so that they can imagine and they can be free. They don’t have to have any inhibitions and feel like they’re going to get it dirty or they can’t ruin it. It’s like the complete opposite. I get comments all the time that, “Our girls love to be a girly girl but they also really like to play. These dresses hold up to what they want to do.”
Andrew: So, you make the first one. I get the excitement for having seen it. But how do you make it into a business. How do you get your first customer for it?
Cynthia: That’s a good question. I think it was I started doing a lot of school events and getting feedback from customers with their kids.
Andrew: What’s a school event?
Cynthia: It’s almost like fundraisers, like when schools throw fundraisers and maybe they hold holiday boutiques and they invite a bunch of vendors to take part in that. I was always doing a bunch of those for a couple years.
Andrew: So, you sell and you give part of the profits to the school and that’s how they raise money and part of the profits to you. In addition, you also get to see your customers directly and learn from them. What do you get to learn from them when they’re selling that way?
Cynthia: Instant feedback. The moms could care less. The moms are like, “Ah, it’s another clothing line.” But it’s the kids that are attracted to it because of all the bright colors and the prints and the softness. It looks like something fun that they want to try on. So, the moms are almost like, “What? What?” And then the kid puts it on and they have to buy it because they won’t take it off.
So, it was more like I do everything for the kid. I don’t care if the mom likes bright colors or not. There are a lot of lines out there for children that are kind of geared towards the moms because they want to look like little mini-mes, and I’m totally the opposite. I could care less if it appeals to them.
Andrew: Did you have this feeling? I know when I started with Mixergy, I said, “I’m just going to post a couple of videos on a website and hopefully 100 people watch it. I used to have a company that did tens of millions of dollars a year and now I’m going to go to 100 people a day watching me?” It was really hard for me to go to that level. Did you ever say to yourself, “I was on these big TV shows. My husband is part of this big TV industry. We are bigger than just sitting at this little mom and pop school event.” Do you ever feel that? No?
Cynthia: Never. I don’t do the school events anymore.
Andrew: But when you did…?
Cynthia: When I did, I always felt like, “Wow, I’m the queen of my own domain.” I felt so much more powerful and in control of my own destiny than I ever did auditioning for something, even when I was on “Friends,” even when I was on the set. I always felt like I was dispensable, in a way. It never felt like it was mine and I could control it. I always felt a little out of control in that business.
Andrew: So, what kind of changes did you make after you started seeing the feedback from the girls and the parents?
Cynthia: We did build a website and then to get the word out, we would contact mom bloggers and start to get more feedback online and send product to people so they could review it because it really something you have to tactilely experience.
Andrew: I see. So, this Gotham Love site, she might have gotten a dress for free for a review.
Cynthia: Yeah, exactly. But they don’t have to give a glowing review. They can easily just say, “Hey, got this dress. Check it out.” But you can tell by when people really honestly review something and they go to the lengths to take the pictures they do and they glow about it and then they become customers themselves. So, it’s really a win-win to get the product out there.
Andrew: That’s pretty typical business practice for physical products. That’s one of the things that I admire and am kind of jealous of with physical products. You can actually send it to someone and they feel special for having it in the mail.
Cynthia: Yeah. One thing, I have to say that our authentic, completely authentic–not that the blogs aren’t, but there is a give and take there–but the reviews. We have almost 300–it might be over 300 now–on our site, the Yotpo reviews. Those are the best indication. I can’t even replicate–
Andrew: What is Yotpo? I don’t know.
Cynthia: Yotpo is amazing. It’s an add-on that you put on your site and every time a person buys a product, the customer gets a little questionnaire like, “Hey, will you review this product?” Once they review it, Yotpo knows it’s a verified customer and I can’t alter the reviews. I can’t add to the reviews. I can un-publish something if it has nothing to do with my product, more like, “Hey, it came late.”
Andrew: I see. It’s a third-party and it makes the reviews feel more credible and gives them more credibility. Did you actually test it against creating your own review system?
Cynthia: You know, no. I wanted to do a third-party because I really wanted it to be removed from us more. I think it’s a great way to create interest. People like knowing what things are about from other people, not just me.
Andrew: All right. I should do a quick sponsorship message here. The sponsorship message–this has got to be one of the last times that I say it because they just bought a test collection of ads from us. It’s KickoffLabs. Where is it? My sponsorship message for KickoffLabs–I know it’s here.
Here’s what KickoffLabs does. It helps you grow your mailing list. If you’re in business and you don’t know how powerful a mailing list is, you can frankly, fast forward through this. But most people understand and what they want to do is grow the mailing list, grow the list of people that they get to contact every week.
So, here’s what KickoffLabs does. They give you a landing page that converts. But a lot of sites do that, right? They make it easy for you to pop up that request for an email address based on triggers, like one of their widgets allows you to pop up their request for an email address when people are about to leave the site. So, you can say, “Hey, I see you’re about to leave the site. How about taking 10% off if you give me your email address?” We tried that at Mixergy–really effective, that technique.
So, they do all that. They really make it easy for you to collect email addresses. But here’s the part that’s unique to them that I haven’t seen anyone else do. After a person gives you their email address, what do you usually do? You say thank you and you might suggest that they go back to their email program and confirm their email address. But that’s a wasted opportunity.
So, what KickoffLabs says is that you can incentive sharing on that page. That means you can say to your person, “Thank you for joining my mailing list. If you like it so much that you just trusted me, how about spreading the world and telling your friends on Twitter or Facebook that they could get this free PDF that you signed up for,” they could join my mailing list. “If you do, we will give you…” and then you can give your audience whatever you want, maybe a bigger discount on your product, maybe another PDF.
So, here’s the flow. Someone is about to leave your site. You bring up one of their widgets that say, “Hey, how about giving us your email address and we’ll give you 10% off a future order.” The person puts in their email address and you say, “Well, you just got 10%. How about sharing this 10% with your friends? If you do, we’ll give you an additional 10% off, so you’ll get 20% off.” Think of how that incentivized request for an email address gives your user a benefit for sharing it and makes them more likely to share it.
I’ve told you in past interviews about others who have liked it and gotten good value out of it, including Dan from Power Toothpaste, who I saw on Reddit who said that 84% of his signups for this big campaign came from the share. I told you about Steven and frankly–yeah, I was going to say I won’t tell you. Steven got 50% conversion rate on his landing page from KickoffLabs.
These guys are fantastic. They’re making it easy for you to sign up if you go to–the URL I don’t love. I shouldn’t say anything about my sponsor that I don’t love, but I don’t love the URL at KickoffLabs. But I’m going to give it anyway because the product is so good. It’s Try.KickoffLabs.com/Mixergy.
Try.KickoffLabs.com/Mixergy–the “Try.” is the part I don’t like, but I get why they have it there. They want to make it easy to try it if you’re listening to my voice–Try.KickoffLabs.com/Mixergy. As always, we’ll link to it in the show notes. I’m grateful to them for sponsoring.
Cynthia: I’m writing that down.
Andrew: I saw that. I actually secretly believe that my sponsors don’t so much care about the audience. That’s a bonus. They just care will my guest end up being a customer.
Cynthia: Yeah. That’s a fantastic little thing I haven’t heard before.
Andrew: Yeah. It’s a new thing for them. Then you started–once you had your website and you knew what the problem was and you saw girls get excited about it and moms being willing to pay for it. It’s time to grow. So, you started to go after bloggers. What did you do that got bloggers attention, that got DailyCandy’s attention, that got people to pay attention when most of us don’t get any response when we try to do that.
Cynthia: I know. I think I really had something interesting and new. I think before I started TwirlyGirl, it was almost a time when a lot of moms, it was the mom-preneur craze almost was just starting. So, it was almost a different angle for a mom to come up with something new. Now it’s like old hat. You need almost like a different spin to differentiate yourself. But at the time, I really was on the cusp of that wave and I just rode it. I just kept sending it around.
Andrew: Was it just emailing them? Was there something about your email that got people to open it up?
Cynthia: I think that the website was very engaging at the time, even though it was probably I’d look at it and laugh now. But I really did focus on the girls. My photography was great. Everything I presented was really top notch. I had no idea what I was doing, but luckily I had an amazing neighbor who was in the advertising business. She wasn’t any longer, but she did our logo and the girl and she said, “If you’re going to spend money on anything,” when I got that $20,000. She goes, “The most important thing you’re going to spend it on is branding. That’s it–branding. That’s where your money should go.”
Andrew: So, what kind of branding did you get?
Cynthia: She created the word mark, TwirlyGirl, of her own hand. She drew it. So, it’s not a standard font.
Andrew: Oh, I see. She’s saying spend it with her. You paid her.
Cynthia: Well, she’s saying that’s what you want to invest in. She gave me an amazing deal at first, like hardly anything, like $500. I said, “What’s really what you would get?” She goes, “I’d really get $5,000.” When I got that $20,000, I paid her what she’s worth. So, I was really lucky that somebody took my hand and guided me the right way.
Everything I did I really tried to do with integrity and authenticity and it’s almost like when you’re doing a remodel on your house, if you’re going to cheap out what’s the point? Do it right. Do it one time. That’s kind of how I started. I think when I presented to bloggers or newspapers or to get editorials, it looked like I knew what I was doing. I was the real thing. I wasn’t just a mom in her garage, even though I was for a while.
Andrew: The photos were fantastic. I’m going back and looking at the old version of the site. It doesn’t look like it does now. It’s much simpler, but the photos were fantastic. So, you paid a photographer. There was one girl, you got her jumping up in the air wearing–
Cynthia: Leggings, the stripes.
Andrew: Right.
Cynthia: I still use those pictures.
Andrew: I was for a second there hesitating because I couldn’t tell, “Am I looking at an old version of the site or a current version of the site?” So, how much do you spend on photography?
Cynthia: Yeah. Obviously it depends on the photographer you use, but anywhere from $800 to $1,000 for a big session. For small sessions, it could be half that. But you can’t skimp on that kind of stuff. You really do need to invest in how you’re presenting yourself. I really understood the power of the visual appeal of the dress. Because people can’t feel it, they really have to see it in motion. I’ve tried so many times to have the static girl just standing there. I’m like, “No, no, she’s got to move. Scrap it.”
Andrew: She’s got to be out on a field or in a school yard.
Cynthia: We’re trying different things. I always try different backgrounds, different takes on things. But I always end up with the motion. That’s really what comes across the best.
Andrew: What platform did you build your site on? I can’t tell.
Cynthia: Oh my god. Drupal, I think it was.
Andrew: Is that what it was? Now you’re on Bigcommerce, right?
Cynthia: Yeah. Before that, we were on Crexendo, which is StoresOnline. They were great. They were amazing. But we hit a ceiling with all the apps we wanted to put on and doing a feed for Amazon and all of these things, Bigcommerce offered that to us. So, that’s why we had to move.
Andrew: Now you’re on Amazon because of Bigcommerce?
Cynthia: Yeah, exactly. We have to use a third-party to feed it, but they couldn’t even comprehend the file from StoresOnline. So, it stopped us for years doing that.
Andrew: I see it. Wow. These dresses sell for $60-$80.
Cynthia: $60-$80 is probably our price range.
Andrew: Wow. Children’s clothing is often like $20.
Cynthia: Which one?
Andrew: Children’s clothing?
Cynthia: Well, it depends on where you get it from. The fabrics are completely different, the craftsmanship, the quality.
Andrew: I see that. I get it from Carter’s. That’s where I get my kid’s stuff. But he’s like a year old.
Cynthia: It depends on where they’re made too. Because I create things like works of art, I number every single dress. So, when you get something it will say, “One of six, two of ten.”
Andrew: Really?
Cynthia: Yeah, because each size only make maybe ten size tens in that color way.
Andrew: Really?
Cynthia: So, we number everything like a work of art.
Andrew: I can’t believe a girl at that age would know enough to care about that.
Cynthia: Well, that would be something the parents would see as value, knowing that their kids aren’t— you’re paying a premium price, but what you’re getting is something for the child to feel like she’s an individual, that she can express her personality, that she’s not going to look like everybody else.
For me, as a kid growing up, I felt so invisible that to feel special, to feel like I am who I am and I’m proud of it is very different than wearing someone from the Gap. My kids have stuff from Target and the Gap, stuff that’s kind of disposable fashion that you don’t care what happens to it. But when they really want to feel like a million bucks and so different, they want to stand out. They want to express themselves, you can’t do that in a big box brand.
Andrew: I always wonder how you come up with things like numbering the dresses to that level. I know that it’s so small compared to that actual product, but it has huge impact. My example of that is always I was so proud once I had this great scotch. I was going home in an Uber and I was so proud of the scotch.
The driver said that he one had like a green label Johnny Walker. I said, “This is better than whatever Johnny Walker you’re talking about. You probably don’t even know about Johnny Walker.” He didn’t because you know what he told me? He told me about the box that it comes in. He told me how when you open the box, it looks a certain way. I think there was like velvet in the box.
The thing that if I was a whiskey maker I would never think mattered–it’s all about how long the drink is age, what it tastes like and so on–he cared only about that and it influenced what he thought of the actual product. I know these things that aren’t intrinsic to the product have outsized impact on the way people perceive them, I just don’t think about them. So, do you remember your thought process for you ended up numbering your dresses?
Cynthia: Yeah.
Andrew: What is that?
Cynthia: It’s all about the customer and the experience they’re going to get. I want everything to be valued and treasured and looked at like we put so much thought into every single aspect of everything I create, to the point where every style has its own story, a made up story that Michael writes and it goes with what you can experience in the dress and then the hang tag has an incantation, a little spell that the child can read and then it goes from there to, “Wow, your dress is one of ten. That’s it. That’s all that was made of this size and this color way.” You’re getting something so special.
So, for me, it all goes back to the experience that I want the girls to have and treasure, that they know from the moment they get it out of the package, it’s wrapped like a piece of candy in fabric with satin ribbons. So, I’ve seen videos of the girls opening them and they’re like, “What is this?” and they’re just happy with that. They don’t even know what’s inside it. They’re just happy. And then they take the wrapping off and they put it on their head and they’re like, “Look at all the things I can do with this wrapping,” and they haven’t even gotten to the dress yet.
Then when they get the dress and then when they read the poem–so, it just keeps going and going. Then it becomes a part of their childhood. When they look back on pictures and they see themselves in that dress, they’ll remember that they felt like one of kind experience that stays with them forever. So, it’s really like I want to be a part of their childhood. To do that, I want every single aspect to be memorable.
Andrew: This is on YouTube that they’re posting it?
Cynthia: Yeah, they send us videos.
Andrew: They send you videos of themselves opening it up.
Cynthia: Yeah. We put it on our YouTube channel with their permission. Sometimes we post to our social media. Sometimes I just get them in emails. I just watch them open their gifts. It’s amazing.
Andrew: But it’s you sitting around and saying, “How can I make every part of this an experience?”
Cynthia: Right.
Andrew: What’s another aspect outside of the box that you make an experience that most people wouldn’t even know existed?
Cynthia: The customer service, the level of customer service, where I’ll be home on a Sunday evening always checking email. I’ll write somebody back if they had some innocuous question about something. They’re like, “What? You’re answering me now?” I’m like, “Hell yeah I’m going to answer you now,” because I’m part of the now-now club. When I ask somebody a question, I’m like, “Where are they? Why aren’t they responding?” So, I understand that immediate need for response and I want to give that to my customers.
So, we really do our best to go be above and beyond. People feel like they’re our only customer. That I learned from just innately on kind of nurture and control freak anyway, so I was always doing that. But then when I read Tony Hsieh’s book, “Delivering Happiness,” I felt like, “Okay, I’m not crazy. This really is the way to build a business one person at a time and you treat them like they’re your only customer.” I love doing that. That’s kind of why I fell out of wholesale a little bit. We still do wholesale. But my main passion is dealing with my end customers.
Andrew: I want to ask you about wholesale and what happened there. I went to your contact page and saw there was a link to Heather, who apparently does wholesale and I want to ask you about that. But you mentioned Tony Hsieh’s book. I have to tell people how much I love that book. I resisted it for years. I think I was even given a copy of it for free from one of Tony’s people. I said, “I don’t want a preachy book about how to be wonderful that really is secretly trying to sell Zappos.” It was so not that.
Cynthia: No.
Andrew: It was his story in a way you wouldn’t even expect it, like when they wanted to buy a building or an apartment for parties, how he sold his company and just had such a fun time. It was a set of stories, but also, an eye opening approach to creating company culture without feeling heavy-handed and without feeling like he’s just giving you a very broad understanding. He was very specific. It was a good read.
Cynthia: Yeah. It is about creating a culture. That’s kind of what I’m doing with my brand. So, going back to the price of the dress, it’s all about what you’re getting for that whole experience. We’re with you 100% of the way. We even have people call and say, “My daughter wore her dress while riding a bike. She got it caught. Can you fix this? We know it’s a horrible mistake?” I’m like, “Send it back. I’ll replace the skirt.” I took the skirt off, replaced it with another one. I didn’t even need to replace the dress. They weren’t even asking for that. The kid probably wouldn’t even want a new dress. She wanted the dress that she had. That’s what you get. I love that culture of taking care of people.
Andrew: All right. In a moment, I’ll ask you about wholesale. I always think of wholesale as being a way of selling so much more all at once and getting access to a bigger market. It didn’t work that great for you. Let’s talk about it in a second. But first, I’ve got to tell people about my second and final sponsor, which is Toptal.
Look, these guys keep upping and upping and reupping their ad spend with me at Mixergy because it just works for them. The reason is works for them is because a lot of people are like where I was just a few months ago. I knew I needed to create new software for my site. The software that I knew I needed was search. When I liked to people who cancelled, they complained about search. When I talked to people who bought, they said, “I’m so glad to buy, but your search really stinks.”
So, how do you create search that makes it easy for people to find the right interview from 1,000 interviews that we had on the site? I didn’t know how to do it. My developer, Michael, didn’t have time to do it. The team in India that was working for Michael didn’t have time. They didn’t, frankly, have the creativity to do it.
So, we said, “Let’s go over to Toptal.” We filled out one of their forms on the site. I put in my credit card. I don’t know if I did or didn’t at that point. I paid for it at some point. What I got was a call with someone and I said, “Here’s what we are. We’re a WordPress company.”
I was a little embarrassed because I knew these guys are top developers. Their blog is read by developers. I felt, “I’m just a WordPress site. What do they care?” They said, “We work with WordPress sites.” Then I told them how we worked. I said, “We’re not in an office together. Michael is not a full-time developer for us. Here are the constraints. Here’s what we need you to do. Here’s the big problem that needs to be solved right now.”
They found someone for us. Michael talked to the person and he wasn’t a good fit. Then they found a second person for us and Michael talked to that person and he was a great fit and the guy started working for us on the site. He created search and we then needed to design for it.
So, Michael, our developer, started designing something for it. It was so bad. Sorry, Michael. I was so bad. It made no sense. It was very much like Windows Preference pane, where you have all these different dials and things and it kind of makes sense because you can whatever you want, but you need an instruction manual to use it.
We said, “We need a new design to make this make sense. So, that’s what we did. We got a designer. Now the site is up. It works and search is good and it’s because this guy got us started. That’s the power of a good developer. He’ll understand what you need and help you do it. A good developer isn’t just universally good. They have to fit within your culture.
That’s why when you go to Toptal, they ask you about your culture. They ask you about your company. They ask you about your mission. They ask you about how you work, what your quirks are, what your software is. You can have that whole treatment and you can hire someone to work on a project. You can hire them to work part-time, full-time, whatever you need. Toptal will find you the right developer.
All you have to do is go to Toptal.com. Top as in top of the mountain, tal as in talent. If you add a /Mixergy to the end of it, meaning go to Toptal.com/Mixergy, they will give you 80 free Toptal developer hours when you pay for 80. We didn’t get that. We just paid straight up. In addition, they’re going to give you a no-risk trial period of up to two weeks, which means if you’re not happy, if you’re not 100% happy, if you’re 99% happy, they’re not happy. You have to be 100% happy or else they will not bill you. And of course, they will pay the developer on your behalf anyway.
They’re fantastic. That’s why Andreessen Horowitz invested in them. That’s why Airbnb is one of their clients and Ideo and Zendesk and Pfizer. I have a bunch of big name customers, but I don’t want to freak you out. So, I’ll just tell you about the startups like Airbnb. They’re out there. They’re using them. I’m using them. I recommend you go to Toptal.com/Mixergy.
So, Cynthia, why–I used to actually include my guests in the ads, but now I’m on a roll. It’s no longer on a conversation. You have to sit there and listen to me get on a roll. I realize I’m not taking a breath.
Cynthia: It’s okay.
Andrew: What’s up with wholesale? When you jumped into wholesale, what did you think it was going to be?
Cynthia: I thought it was going to be what everybody said it would be, where you would get these big stores and they would all be asking for hundreds of units and you’d just be producing and producing and producing and it would just take off. I’d be so busy just doing that that people would start coming out of the woodwork and want more.
It’s a very closed market. The buyers of boutiques are very set in their ways. My product is so different from what is out there–the way it’s produced, the way I do things. At first, I was selling everything assorted because I didn’t have the capability on the website to have the wholesale customers choose what they wanted and buy it online. So, I was like, “I’m just going to send you what I want to send you, just trust me.” Everybody’s like, “No, that’s not how it works. I have to see what you have.” I’m like, “I’m changing it all the time.”
So, it was always this back and forth where I was like I want to do it my way. They’re used to buying a certain way. Eventually, the stores that really understood what we’re about, they’re still with me and they don’t care what I send them. They’re like, “We’re need more of the reversible dress. Just send us whatever you have.” But now I have the website and everybody can order and it’s all fine.
But at the same time, it’s a lot of work and obviously less profit margin. So, you’re running around even faster making probably the same amount of money that you would half the retail customers and less work. I don’t want to put the wholesale down too much because we really did get a lot of exposure through the stores and the stores that really got us, I love them to death and I still work with them.
But the ones that kind of didn’t understand us and it always felt like a brick wall, I had to kind of learn to go, “You know what? It’s not my thing. I’m just not that brand for those stores.” And that’s fine.
Andrew: What’s Elite Kids Inc. and The Dressing Room and Jennifer Rush Kids? Are these…?
Cynthia: Those are all reps.
Andrew: They’re reps. So, you need a rep in each part of the country, like Southern–
Cynthia: Southern California, South Carolina…
Andrew: Right.
Cynthia: I used to have like nine reps all over the country and Canada.
Andrew: By the way, all of these reps has either a Prodigy.net email address, an SBCGlobal.net email address, an AOL.com email–I’m not exaggerating. I don’t want to put them down, but they don’t seem cutting edge.
Cynthia: Well, they operate in a different way. They have showrooms. They don’t always have websites. I think whatever you’re looking at was probably maybe five years old now.
Andrew: Three years old.
Cynthia: Three?
Andrew: Three years old and they’re still on–
Cynthia: I don’t doubt that their emails are still the same. But a lot of these showrooms still operate with buyers coming to the showroom and physically looking and writing up orders. So, they don’t need to look like they have this big presence on the web. It’s not about that. A lot of the reps that we had were very prestigious. They were hard won. They loved the line.
But it was very hard to sell our line to buyers. We’re a smaller line. We’re not a known entity yet back then. Now we have stores coming to us, which is much better. I like dealing with people when they already know that they want us, rather than, “Please, you have to trust us, trust us, trust us.”
Andrew: Do you still have a wholesale link on your site?
Cynthia: We do. People can sign up and buy online. They can get exactly what they want. We’re different because we ship immediate. Buyers don’t have to order six months out before they even know how much money they have coming in. I think our model works so much better.
Andrew: I see. Wholesale is the link right there. It kind of feels like now that I’ve done a few interviews with entrepreneurs who have clothing companies, it feels like one of the first things you do when you start a clothing company is throw up a link for wholesale and just see who responds, right?
Cynthia: Yeah. But our product is so about feeling it and seeing it that I think we don’t get a lot of people who haven’t heard of us before from somewhere, either a customer or a friend who has the dress. We’re out there all over the country and Europe. So, we start getting calls from stores who have seen it.
Andrew: What happened when someone knocked you guys off?
Cynthia: We’re still dealing with that. It’s kind of–I know it’s a very cool thing that I created something that other manufacturers want to knock off. But it really is like a knife in my heart. I have a hard time seeing the positive of it. I’m trying because I can’t really stop them. But what I’ve done is just buy up every single trademark phrase that I can think of and own it.
Andrew: Do they use the name twirl or something that sounds like it? I don’t want to give them any attention here, but did they do that?
Cynthia: They called it the twirly reversible dress. That was not good.
Andrew: And what else?
Cynthia: And they kind of knocked off how I did my product shots and the whole look and feel of their website was eerily exactly like mine. This person who first knocked us off was a customer and I had what she bought and all the questions she asked me.
Andrew: You knew this was what she was getting herself ready to do.
Cynthia: Who knew? But yeah. We basically made it pretty hard for her to describe the dress like mine.
Andrew: Oh, really?
Cynthia: She can’t call it a twirly reversible dress. Nobody really can. There are some people that try to get away with calling it that and saying it’s descriptive terms. But it depends on how much money I want to throw into fighting people.
Andrew: Did you register the trademark, TwirlyGirl? You did.
Cynthia: Oh yeah.
Andrew: That’s what allowed you to do it.
Cynthia: That was the first thing I did. 2006, I was like this name is so obvious. Even if I do nothing with this, I’m just going to own the name.
Andrew: Not so obvious as the name of the dress, so obvious that it’s so perfect.
Cynthia: Yeah. Why wouldn’t this be a dress line? It’s TwirlyGirl.
Andrew: I see a little bit. To me it doesn’t look the same if I’m looking at the same people.
Cynthia: Well, it’s early the same in terms of the reversible dress the design. There’s one that is exactly like ours because I can tell the patter they used. They literally took a dress and just knocked it off.
Andrew: I do see some of it that looked very similar. If you look for the details, it looks like a knockoff to me. But I’m not looking for details and I can see moms not paying attention to it.
Cynthia: Yeah, they wouldn’t know. We’ve had some of their customers come to us and go, “Hey, I need another dress.” And then they send us a picture of the dress she was wearing and I’m like, “Yeah, that’s not ours, but okay. I’ll take your money.” I know I’m doing something better anyway.
Andrew: So, the big lesson you took from that is own the trademark. If you’ve got a name that’s so clever, that’s so perfect for you, you’ve got to go with it.
Cynthia: You’ve got to name every other phrase that goes with that trademark.
Andrew: Like “twirly reversible dress.”
Cynthia: Yeah, “original reversible twirly dress,” “twirly dresses,” “twirly.” I own the word “twirly.” God knows how I got it, but I got it. She was using twirly like 80 to 100 times on a page. I was able to kind of call her out on that because it’s like now it sounds like you’re branding your products, not just using it as a descriptive. You just have to be vigilant to protect your brand. I’m not trying to stop somebody from being successful, but leave me in my little corner.
Andrew: It doesn’t seem like that’s the way it works in retail.
Cynthia: In fashion.
Andrew: If someone tried to copy Mixergy–actually, people copy and I still get tons of feedback on it and I’m okay with it to some degree. You don’t want to be a $100 million company with this? You don’t want this to be the Carter’s of girl fun dresses?
Cynthia: Of course, there’s a part of me that would mind if that would happen, but I don’t think that’s what’s important. My goal would be to keep doing what I’m doing, maybe scale it up a little bit to be able to provide more dresses quicker to those stories that wanted it eventually. We’ve been in Nordstrom’s. We’re in catalogues like Chasing Fireflies. Those are pretty big places.
But to scale it up to be able to ship hundreds of dresses in a week’s notice would require a bit of a different infrastructure than I have now. It’s possible. But my goal is really to make a living. I don’t need a yacht. My husband and I, he loves the business he’s in, but he’s realistic. It’s hard to get work. This is something we can do together and grow together. As long as it sustains us without sacrificing my vision of what TwirlyGirl is really about, I’m happy with it just bringing us money to live.
Andrew: What size sales are you doing now?
Cynthia: We’re probably close to half a million this year, hopefully.
Andrew: In sales or profit?
Cynthia: In sales. Slowly growing–we’ve never taken out loans. We’re never in the red. We never owe and bills or anything. I’ve never mortgaged my house. So, I like growing really slow and steady. I feel like I make smart decisions that way. I’m not doing it because I have to pay my employees and I can’t pay the rent. I couldn’t function that way and I think the business would suffer. I would probably sell out easier that way.
So, I’m happy growing the way we’re growing. We’re learning as we go. We just started switching to retail, focusing on our retail customer just in the last two years. In the last two years, our sales have grown 20%, 30% each year. So, that’s huge.
Andrew: If you saw me just click around after you said half a million, it’s because I looked at my notes here and the producer notes say $1 million in revenue.
Cynthia: It’s over years.
Andrew: Oh, I see, $1 million total.
Cynthia: Combining all the years, yes, we’ve made $1 million.
Andrew: So, this last year you’ve made about as much as you did over the previous history of the company.
Cynthia: Last year we did close to maybe $300,000 in sales and the year before that it was around $250,000 and the year before that it was in the $200,000s. So, cumulatively over seven years, it’s been $1 million. I don’t mean to mislead anyone, but that’s just form nothing.
Andrew: From a $20,000 inheritance.
Cynthia: Yeah. That’s from nothing. Growing is step by step, learning, taking a route through wholesale, ignoring retail for like four years, just going on word of mouth, no advertising, nothing.
Andrew: I’m looking to see where you get your biggest traffic. For some reason, Login.Bigcommerce sends you traffic.
Cynthia: Well, that’s us.
Andrew: Yeah. That’s you guys. I finally got my SimilarWeb account back up. Here’s something else that I noticed. You guys use ReferralCandy for affiliate sales, right?
Cynthia: We used to.
Andrew: What do you think of that?
Cynthia: You know, I think it’s a great program. It’s one of the best ones out there because the customers can really use it so easily. They get a unique code. They don’t have to sign in and do all these crazy things that make them want to not do it. So, referral candy is probably the best one we’ve found for ease of us.
Andrew: What they do is someone buys, you give them a discount if they tell their friends and their friends buy.
Cynthia: Yeah. And their friends get a coupon.
Andrew: What’s the challenge with that? It feels like it’s really powerful but it didn’t work for you. Why not?
Cynthia: I think it didn’t work for us because our customers–here’s my theory. I think when you find something that’s so unique, you kind of want to keep it to yourself. I almost think that’s the thought behind it because we get people who have seen it on other people who say, “Hey, my friend’s daughter has that dress and I want it for my kid.” But I don’t know that necessarily that person told their friend about it.
Andrew: I see.
Cynthia: Do you see what I’m saying?
Andrew: Yeah.
Cynthia: I think you’ve got busy moms. I’m a mom, I don’t refer friends, I’ve got to be honest, only if it was something that I thought was perfect for their daughter specifically.
Andrew: Right, then I buy it for them so I could be the hero.
Cynthia: Even then I’m just too busy and I don’t want to bother friends. They’ll find it if they want to have it. But maybe my demographic just isn’t the type to refer. I think it’s more of a 20-something, 19-something thing to do to refer your friends. I don’t know. I think that’s my theory. But they are a good company. We will probably try it again. That would be the only one we’d try.
Andrew: I’m looking through again to see what else is of interest. It looks like you guys use Pinterest really well. That’s helpful. You use social media pretty well, right?
Cynthia: Yeah. Michael has educated himself on that whole world. He’s really done an amazing job getting our ads together, Google ads, Google shopping, Facebook ads. Like I said, in the last two years, this has really been our focus and it’s paid off for sure. The profit is so much more.
Andrew: I asked my–actually, our producer asked you if you could teach a class for entrepreneurs, what topic would you teach it on? You said finding your unique voice so you can reach your audience. You are really good at finding your unique voice. How do you do that?
Cynthia: I think it’s really being true to your story and what your passion is, why you got into what you got into. When you reveal the why, people can identify with that. They want to connect with you. They want to know what makes you tick, in a way, and then they feel more connected to the brand. I feel like I infuse that with everything that I do so that everything has my personality in it and also just the TwirlyGirl aesthetic is very true. So, that helps.
Andrew: I see it. It’s not just the voice in text. It’s voice also through the imagery, through the photos, through the logo.
Cynthia: Yeah. We’re putting out a new video about the making of TwirlyGirl and we take them behind the scenes and fabric shopping and what goes into it. It’s only like a minute and 30 seconds or something. But again, it’s more about different ways to tell the story and different ways–some people are interested in the behind the scenes. Some people are interested in my personal story. Some people just want to see a fun little commercial of the girls twirling around. We want to provide every person that opportunity to learn more about us. I think being authentic and sharing that is really valuable.
Andrew: The website for anyone who wants to see the dresses is TwirlyGirlShop.com. I’ll say too my sponsor is Toptal.com/Mixergy. Remember, you need a developer, go to Toptal.com/Mixergy. If you want to grow your mailing list go to Try–what is it?
Cynthia: Try.KickoffLabs.
Andrew: Try.KickoffLabs.com/Mixergy. They’re really good people. I’ve known them for a long time for years. The founder was on Mixergy with a previous version of this product or previous piece of the product. Boy, he really grew it since then. So, it’s Try.KickoffLabs.com/Mixergy.
Cynthia, thank you.
Cynthia: Thank you. It was such a pleasure. I’m so thrilled to be on your show.
Andrew: Yeah. It’s great to have you on here. I love when someone is watching the interviews, builds a company and comes back here to do an interview too. I hope whoever is listening to us does the same thing and I’m looking forward to seeing them on Mixergy.
Thank you, Cynthia. Thank you all for being a part of Mixergy. Bye, everyone.
