Catherine Langman:
Well, hello there, it’s Catherine Langman here back with another episode of the Productpreneur Success podcast. I think you listeners know by now how much I love to share other people’s stories and the real stories behind the glossy journeys of entrepreneurs. And the successes, and maybe some of the challenges as well.
Catherine Langman:
And today I’m actually joined on the show by a guest Sarah Shaw who does just that and shares all of the ups and downs of her journey. She actually started as a costume designer in Hollywood and went on to become a handbag designer. She designed handbags that were seen on the arms of celebrities and on the sets of some of the movies that we would all know and love. And then went on to actually have to close and lose that business. And then, through a period of redemption and starting another really successful business and onwards and upwards. And so it’s such a delight to chat with Sarah today. It’s a fantastic conversation. I know you’re going to really enjoy it. But I particularly love being able to hear about the tough times and the way through the tough times to success on the other side. So pull up a pew and enjoy the interview with Sarah.
Catherine Langman:
Welcome to the show, Sarah. It is fantastic to have you here.
Sarah Shaw:
I am so excited to be here with you, Catherine.
Catherine Langman:
So good and tuning in from the other side of the world of course. We’re going to have a bit of a chat about your journey becoming an entrepreneur. You’ve got quite an interesting winding journey and some great story to share with us today. I guess, before we’d really dive into all of that, how about you start by sharing a little bit about yourself and your background and getting started as an entrepreneur?
Sarah Shaw:
Okay, so honestly, I never thought I’d be an entrepreneur. When I graduated college, I switched from French literature because I’d thought I’d be simultaneous translator at the UN and travel the world. That was my plan. I fell into costume design because I went to a small liberal arts college and they forced you to take something in the theatre or arts department. There was no way I was taking acting. Set design and lighting just sounded boring and I thought, “Oh, I’ll just take costume design. This should be fun and I won’t have any homework.” I had so much from my French major, writing papers and everything.
Sarah Shaw:
I took this costume design class and then I just fell in love with it. I ended up double majoring in costume design and French literature. I couldn’t really get out of the French at that point, kind of an odd major.
Catherine Langman:
It is.
Sarah Shaw:
When I graduated college, my sister was living in Los Angeles and working in film for a producer and said that she had just met a costume designer who could help me get going in Los Angeles. I didn’t even really know what that meant because I was thinking I was applying to graduate school. I really wanted to go to NYU and get my masters in costume design and designing for Broadway. That’s what I was trained for in college and I thought, “Okay, this is my career.”
Sarah Shaw:
Anyway, I decided to move to Los Angeles because I had graduated a few months late. I had about nine months before I would go to graduate school. I ended up staying in LA because I got a job working in the costume houses there which is how you get into the union. I ended up getting a full ride to NYU and I deferred it for a year. Then I never ended up going. I stayed in LA and I became a costumer doing costumes for movies and worked my way up and became a costume supervisor which is the person who produces the costume department.
Sarah Shaw:
Here I am, just thinking I’m going to stay in costume for the rest of my life, never thought about being an entrepreneur. I’m actually a fourth-generation entrepreneur. Everybody in my family including all of my siblings now are entrepreneurs.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, it’s in the blood.
Sarah Shaw:
I think it’s not something I could get away from, right? I worked in film for about 10 years doing costumes and had this idea for a handbag with this craft club that I’d started. I just shoved it in the drawer because I was never going to be an entrepreneur. I was going to work in film till the day I die.
Sarah Shaw:
I had a boyfriend later that year who was an entrepreneur. I never knew anybody who was an entrepreneur outside my family. He got wind of this handbag idea and basically dared me to get it going. I’m always up for a good dare and so working nights and weekends, I somehow managed to get the sample bag done. I’m not a very good seamstress. I can sew a straight line and have my pair of pants but the bag was very simple and doesn’t have a lining or anything. I sewed some samples and finally got up the nerve to show it to the costume designer I had been working with for about six years. She was a close friend at that point and annoyed at me because I never wanted to go do anything because I was always working and sewing because I didn’t tell her what. I was like, “I’m working on a surprise.”
Sarah Shaw:
I took some bags to her house and we actually went out to dinner that night. We were sitting at a bar. We were going to eat dinner sitting at the bar of a restaurant and I had my little tiny bag up on the bar. A woman came over and said, “Oh, I love your bag. Where did you get it?” I just stared at here like a deer in a headlights and my friend stands up, “This is Sarah Shaw. She is the designer, isn’t it cute? I mean she’s just launching this line,” and goes into this whole thing. I just must have turned 50 shades of purple and this woman, I couldn’t even speak. This woman says, “Well, I’m a buyer at this store you probably see in the mall.” I knew this store because I shopped for a living. I was working costume and we both knew the store, my friend and I. She said, “But, we only buy clothes from Europe so I can’t purchase your bag but that’s a million dollar idea and you should go for it.” I was like, “Okay!”
Sarah Shaw:
And so, after my friend and I squealed a little bit and ordered a second round of cocktails, she’s like, “I told you it was so cute and you really should go for this.” I continued with my job in film because I needed money and I kept working on this at night and on the weekends. That was really my first product company that I developed. Over five years, I built that to over a million dollar business and there’s lots of billions of stories in there. That was really the beginning of my product phase company and it was really a dare.
Catherine Langman:
That’s incredible. I’ve heard lots of different origin stories by now but not a dare. That’s very cool. I love it! Yeah, so obviously this particular business of yours was the first of a few businesses and you did grow it into something quite significant. Before we jump into some of the tougher challenges that you faced, I know it’s really hard when you get asked what would you attribute to the success of your business but if you could pinpoint one or two things that really were key drivers for that success, what would you say?
Sarah Shaw:
First, I had a super innovative product. The handbag that I created had never been seen before. It was shaped like a shopping bag but all the seems was cut with pinking shears. You know the zigzag scissors? It was stitched on the outside so you saw the detail of the zigzag. I made it out of pool table felt was the first bag that I made. It was the luxurious gorgeous wool bag that were fused meaning glued to a black interior lining. They were all two-toned and it was just really the shape and the styling. People knocked off my pinking shears edges later on.
Catherine Langman:
As the best designs happen, yes.
Sarah Shaw:
You’re like, “Grrr,” but, “Wow! Thank you! You’re really famous.” I think the success was A, because of the innovative design and people were anxious to write about it so I got a lot of press because nobody had ever seen anything like that. Then really it was when I discovered and thought about or realized getting products to celebrities was really the way to go because nobody would bring it yet. That changed the face of my business. I mean, we doubled our sales in two years from half a million to a million.
Sarah Shaw:
Then we started to seed bags into TV shows and movies. Then that really changed the face of my company. They really put me on the map. I mean, I was a nobody and when you can tell people, “Oh, well here’s my bag in Legally Blonde or here’s my bag in Ocean’s Eleven. Here’s other celebrities with pictures holding my bag,” it catapults you and it raises your credibility level. More stores want to buy from you. More people want to buy from your website, more magazines want to write about you. It all feeds on each other and really helps the brand grow.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, I guess you get that huge snowball effect from some of that publicity which probably take on a life of its own after a little bit.
Sarah Shaw:
Yeah, it felt like it did.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I imagine that it might’ve been like you’d have to strap yourself in for the ride a little bit and just hang on for dear life.
Sarah Shaw:
Yeah, well I mean, you just never know. It’s funny. We showed up one day. We came into work and this was maybe in 2001. We had 75 or 100 orders for this cosmetic bag that we had three of in stock. It was on our website and everybody was putting Oprah as the reference. We had a little tab where you would say where did you hear-
Catherine Langman:
Where did you hear?
Sarah Shaw:
… hear about us, right?
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Sarah Shaw:
It just had a little blank spot. It wasn’t fancy enough back then to have a pull down. Now, there’s pull down like Google or Facebook ads or whatever. This was just a blank space where you could type it in or not. Everybody wrote Oprah. We were like, “Oprah?” It turned out that Oprah Magazine put us on the O List, which was fabulous but they forgot to credit check.
Catherine Langman:
Oh, no.
Sarah Shaw:
We somehow slipped through the cracks and so that was another one of those moments where you’re like, “Holy cow! We have three of these and we have 100 orders or something and they kept coming in.”
Catherine Langman:
What did you do?
Sarah Shaw:
My sister was working with me at the time, doing some publicity for me and we were both just screaming. Then we decided, “Okay, we’ll just put up a little note on the site that says, “Due to our placement in Oprah Magazine, this product is sold out. Please choose another.” We had lots of other patterns because we had already called the fabric supplier and they’re like, “No, this doesn’t exist anymore.” It went kaput, right? We just quickly put up this little sign on the website. It said, “Due to our placement in Oprah,” and put a little picture of the magazine cover and please select another.
Sarah Shaw:
Then we had to go back and email all those people. The first three got the right one but then after that, “Due to our placement in Oprah, it already sold out. Can you please choose another?” That took five days or something to get sorted out. A gift like that totally changes the financial state of your business. I mean we sold thousands of them.
Catherine Langman:
That’s incredible!
Sarah Shaw:
Because magazines sit around in nail salons and hair salons especially Oprah. People, they tear things out and put it away for later. It’s a gift that keeps on giving. It was an amazing opportunity. Small things like that you think, “Oh, well it could be nothing. Oh, yeah we’re on Oprah! Oh my god! We’re on Oprah!”
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Sarah Shaw:
I had been in Oprah another time later on and it wasn’t nearly as successful. It’s kind of right place, right time I think with the media. When we decided that we were going to start pursuing getting products like when we started getting stuff to celebrities and started to see them showing up in magazines holding my bags and going to movie premiers or whatever, I used those pictures from the magazines to get into stores and obviously get more online sales and pitched it to more magazines, “Look how fancy I am.”
Sarah Shaw:
Then we thought, “Okay well let’s try to get our products into movies or to television shows. This is the next iteration of the celebrity because we had more control over that. We called Sony Pictures and just were like, “Hey,” at a product placement office, “Do you guys are working on any movies with college kids or young moms or people who might need handbags on shoots?” “Oh, well yeah. They’re getting this movie together with college kids and let me call down and see if they want some bags.” She called back and said, “Oh, my god! They would love to see your bags.” I threw a whole bunch of stuff in my car and drove over to Sony Pictures. I was lucky that I lived in LA. I went and I just threw them all on the floor and just let them pick out what they wanted. They kept most of them and just said we have all these college girls. We’ll just give them all your bags to wear. I said, “Oh, okay! Great!” It turned out to be Legally Blonde.
Catherine Langman:
Oh, what a score!
Sarah Shaw:
One of my bags was used. Reese Witherspoon had it next to her when she was watching a football game on her lounge chair. Then that happened to be the publicity shot for the film. That was pure luck. I didn’t even know they used my bags in the movie until that film came out.
Catherine Langman:
You saw it. Yeah.
Sarah Shaw:
Advertising the film and so I was able to show that to department stores. Nordstrom’s placing a huge order for that bag and Sony Pictures was so excited about it that they made these mini movie posters to give to Nordstrom’s, put in all the bags that they were shipping. Those kinds of moments, sometimes you don’t know if they’re going to happen. I always tell clients now, “Don’t be over prepared for a piece of press that’s coming out. You could sell three or you could sell 3,000. You have no idea. It’s always better to put up the: Due to our placement in … we’re sold out right now or we’re on back orders or yeah, choose another or place your order or pre-order now. We’ll be shipping every two weeks or something.
Sarah Shaw:
It’s easy these days, right? It takes five seconds to update your website, not a big deal anymore. You don’t need to know special codes. You can always send an email out to your list, “Hey, you probably saw this. In case you didn’t, here’s a picture. This is our good news and we’re already sold out so it’s on back order. Place your order today if you want it for Christmas,” or something. There’s a lot of ways to build the hype yourself and I think that’s really important tool to really take advantage of when you have different opportunities.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, it’s like any opportunity for some news to share, you want to jump on that really.
Sarah Shaw:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, totally.
Sarah Shaw:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Catherine Langman:
Such a good story. We’re going to have a chat a little bit more in a minute about how you can get your product into the hands of celebrities and all that good stuff. Before we get there, can you share a little bit of a story or scenario around maybe one of the biggest challenges that you’ve had to face as you journey. We all face tough times in business and sometimes it can feel like you’re the only one going through it.
Sarah Shaw:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Sarah Shaw:
Okay, hold on to your seats. In September of 2001, 9/11 happened here in New York. Basically, our country came to a standstill. It was obviously the beginning of well what I think of as fourth quarter doesn’t officially start till October first but I think of September as the beginning of fourth quarter. Most product-based businesses and my own at the time, we did probably about 40% to 60% of our sales in fourth quarter. I didn’t quite panic but at the first day after I recovered from the shock but I wasn’t even allowed to go to work. They closed all of downtown Los Angeles for three days. We were on red alert and everything because they were sure LA was going to be the next city to get blown up.
Sarah Shaw:
After that, I was supposed to go to New York and do a trade show in September and of course that was canceled and it got pushed until October. I already had seen the writing on the wall. Everything came to a standstill. Any orders that I had were already being canceled because I sold a lot. East of the Mississippi was my biggest market. My sales reps were in New York. Everything was just shutdown for so long that it was not something that in the end was very pretty. I had just taken on investors, some really big investors probably on August.
Catherine Langman:
Oh, gosh! The timing!
Sarah Shaw:
I had just trying to deal with them and in January of 2002, things were starting to get back to normal, trade shows and markets and things were coming back and happening. I went to Dallas to see my showroom there for the first show of the year. While I was there, my investors called and said, “Unfortunately, because of 9/11 and all of our own merchandise,” they actually were a huge handbag supplier for Walmart and probably did 80 or 90 million a year with Walmart. They said, “Our stuff is still sitting out on the water in their container since 9/11. All of our orders were canceled and we’re in the hole for $12 or $15 million. We just can’t deal with you anymore.” I was like, “Seriously?” I said, “Are you going to make my payroll on Friday?” They said, “No.”
Sarah Shaw:
I sat down on the floor and cried because part of the deal was they made my payroll every other Friday. No notice, nothing like “Hello, we’re done today.” It was a Monday or a Tuesday and so after I cried for a while, I called my daddy. He said, “You better get your butt back in the showroom and sell as much as you can.”
Sarah Shaw:
I had luckily, just before I left for Dallas, there had been a huge article in the Los Angeles Times about me and my investors. It was literally a week before and when we came into the office the day after, on the Monday, there must have been 50 messages, voice mail messages, from other bankers and investors. “Hey, we saw your article. If you need anymore money, call us.”
Sarah Shaw:
I just said to my team, “Hey, just write all these messages down and I’ll deal with it when I get back. Luckily, they’d all called and so I had them find this one phone number, the name of a gentleman that I had met about a year before who had been a consultant for Kate Spade & Company and helped her grow from 26 to 70 million and expand her into Asia and all these different things. I thought, “Well maybe he can take me from one to 10 million. That’s all I need.”
Sarah Shaw:
I called him from Dallas and made an appointment to see him the day after I got back. I showed up there. I hadn’t showered. I had my hair within a ponytail, no make up on. I was in sweatpants and I handed him my P&L and my balance sheet. I was like, “Here you go. I need an answer by five because if not, I have to close my office tomorrow,” because it was payroll day.
Sarah Shaw:
He and his partner were like, “Okay, honey. Go sit in the corner and have a coffee on us.” I just sat there and just stared into space. Then they came over after about an hour and said that they wanted to invest in my company. I was thrilled and they had cut me a check the next morning. I could actually make payroll and things seemed like they were going to move forward. They had all these big plans of we were going to go to Asia because I’d been producing in LA and moved my company production overseas. I was open to anything at that point. I didn’t have a made in America feel or anything like that. I just didn’t know any better.
Sarah Shaw:
Anyway, it just didn’t turn out to be the best partnership and probably by May or so, I knew it wasn’t going to work out with them. They couldn’t raise the money that they thought they could raise from the Asian factories. It was just going down the wrong path for me so I quit.
Catherine Langman:
Oh, wow!
Sarah Shaw:
I gave my notice and said, “I hereby resign as the CEO and I will remain as a designer but if you’d like to keep the company going, you and all my other investors need to find a new CEO.” You can’t run a corporation without a CEO in California. I just sat back and waited. It got pretty ugly and not fun at all. I spent a lot of time dealing with my shareholders.
Sarah Shaw:
When I quit, I realized that there was a lot of debt and I needed to figure out how to resolve this. I didn’t want to go bankrupt. That wasn’t an option for me. I let these guys go. I broke our deal and I’d still had some other friends and family and investors from a couple of years prior. I still had to answer to my shareholders but anyway, they all informed me that they were going to try to sell the brand. I said, “Great! Go for it or bring in a CEO and I’ll keep designing. I don’t care which way it goes.”
Sarah Shaw:
I knew I needed to get rid of my massive amount of inventory and so they made it very clear that I couldn’t put anything on sale. I could not show that I was in trouble because they were trying to sell the company. We had a very big mailing list with about 7,000 or 8,000 people in our constant contact at the time. We divided the list into these little lists to 500 people and we started sending these emails, “You’ve been selected at random to receive 40% at Sarah Shaw Handbags,” and people were ordering. Then we’d let that go for about a week and then we’d take another 1000 people or 500 people, “You’ve been selected at random to receive 45% off.” We went all the way up to 90% off over the week. Then about six weeks, we raised $80,000 on the website and sold off a lot of the bags and was able to pay down a lot of the debt.
Sarah Shaw:
Then I got all the debtors together and just said, “Hey, I don’t want to go bankrupt. I will if any of you file anything against me so if you want to unite, I will do my best to pay you as much as possible. If I go bankrupt I can 100% guarantee you’ll get zero.” They all agreed. Everyone signed the contract that I sent them and I ended up paying them out $0.70 on the dollar which is pretty good. I didn’t go bankrupt.
Catherine Langman:
Thank goodness for that.
Sarah Shaw:
I ended up closing that company at the end of 2002 and just walking away and closing out the last thousand bags that I couldn’t sell TJ Maxx for $10 a piece. I think I probably paid $65 a piece for them.
Catherine Langman:
Oh, wow! That must have been heartbreaking going through that experience.
Sarah Shaw:
It was very heartbreaking and then to top it off, I was very naïve. When I took on investors I had never trademarked my name so they decided, “We should trademark the name of the company.” The corporation, my corporation trademarked my name. When we closed the corporation, the trademark went with it.
Catherine Langman:
You couldn’t trade under your own name.
Sarah Shaw:
I lost the trademark to my own name.
Catherine Langman:
Oh, wow!
Sarah Shaw:
Yeah, so there’s lots of other stories but that’s one of the things that I can give as advice is always trademark under your personal name. Then license your trademark to your corporation so that if you do have shareholders and things like that, that if it is your name, that you always retain ownership of it.
Catherine Langman:
Yes, yeah. Oh, what a hard few lessons to learn there and especially heartbreaking seeing as it really was triggered by that awful tragic event that happened at 9/11, which of course reverberated all around the world as well.
Sarah Shaw:
Yes.
Catherine Langman:
I mean, I know that you actually did pick things up and moved forward and continued to be an entrepreneur and start new businesses, which of course we want to talk about. Can you tell us, in a nutshell, what did you move on and do next?
Sarah Shaw:
The next year, so that was the end of 2002. In 2003, I had an idea for a closet organizer for handbags. I patented that and back then, it didn’t take too long maybe about nine months or 10 months to get a patent. I started selling-
Catherine Langman:
These days it takes years, doesn’t it?
Sarah Shaw:
Yeah, I know it does. This was a specific organizer that was meant to alleviate space in your closet. A lot of women put their handbags on the top shelf in their closet or they hang them on some hook in the closet or put them on the floor, put them on valuable shelf space. This has a specific hook that goes over the closet door and you can hang it on the door. It has a grommet so if you had a little empty space in your closet between the door and the hangers, for example, on the side, you could just put a nail there or a hook and hang it there.
Sarah Shaw:
It was a little multi-use and it wasn’t meant to hang on the actual closet rod. It was meant to alleviate space and it holds up to 14 bags if they’re not too big, seven if they are big. I started selling that randomly, emailing all the 1200 stores I’d been selling to with my bags and none of them wanted it. I mean that may be 13 or 14 out of the 1200 and so I was a little stymied. When I spoke to some of the buyers, they just said, “Oh, well we don’t sell little gifty thing.” Of course they all sell gifts now but back then they just were strictly accessories, clothes. If it was a gift store, then that was different but boutiques just sold handbags, belts and clothes and maybe lingerie.
Sarah Shaw:
I really had to start over and build my own list of gift shops and thank god for the internet then in 2003. Over the next couple of years, I just struggled a little bit with thinking about how I wanted to sell this brand and was this really viable and did anybody but me and a few other people want it because I was very discouraged by the fact that all these other stores but I thought I’d be an instant millionaire. With 1200 stores, I’d already calculated how much I was going to make because they were all going to buy it.
Sarah Shaw:
I really had to learn quickly and this was really where I just developed a lot of the skills that I still use today was in building from scratch essentially a whole new business that was the gift industry which I wasn’t familiar with at all. I never would have shown my bag at the Gift Show in New York because that was not the appropriate show for my handbags. They were too expensive and just not a gifty item. Whereas, this was perfect for the gift market and I had to educated myself, learning how to do Google searches and find stores and build this list from scratch and reach out, forward the emails to these people and learning the ins and outs of selling a totally different to a different market something that I really believed in.
Sarah Shaw:
It worked. I was a fast learner. This was still pre-social media and in the first two years, I did half a million in sales and got into about 400 stores. It moved very quickly and I went back to some of the things that I’d learned in my handbag business over those five years. I got it to celebrities and then even though nobody was standing out on the street going “Hey, look at my closet organizer.” I thought if I get it to celebrities, there’s never going to be a photo of anybody with it but they didn’t seem to care. As long as I had a confirmation email from one of their gatekeepers that they had it, that was enough. I got a lot of press for it and that of course, helped me build the credibility of that brand.
Sarah Shaw:
Then I went to the New York Gift Show and I decided I should license it to a big … I really went to look for sales rep because I couldn’t find any but I ended up licensing my patent to a big closet organizing company and they licensed it for about seven years. Then they retired.
Sarah Shaw:
It was a good run and it taught me a lot about how to grow a business that you don’t really know anything about. It was just interesting learning sales techniques and really getting, learning how to send all the emails myself through constant contact at the time, how to build a website and how to use Photoshop. I did everything. I was really scrappy because I didn’t want to spend money on hiring people because I didn’t really know how it was going to go. I ended up running that business out of my home office for all the years that I had. I did use a shipping warehouse but other than that, I ran everything myself. I ended up with a one-part-time employee for a few years who helped me build the whole sales. She just worked two days a week. I paid her a very low salary plus commission on sales to incentivize her. It was just the two of us building that business. It was a great learning experience.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, and probably felt like redemption too to the first one.
Sarah Shaw:
Yeah, it was. Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, so I mean obviously you’ve had some really good success at growing your business via getting the publicity from gifting to celebrities and getting your products into the hands of those really high profile people. How do you actually do that? How do you get your product into their hands or how did you do it? I’m sure there’s lots of ways you can do it.
Sarah Shaw:
It’s a lot easier than people think.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Sarah Shaw:
The first thing you want to do … it’s six steps I think. Step one is thinking about which celebrities would be right for your brand and for your customer. You want to make sure that let’s just say you have a baby blanket. You want to make sure that you’re looking for celebrities who just had a baby or maybe their baby’s zero to six months. You can Google and find that pretty easily and then make a list of those names. Then look at the names and after you’ve looked at the pictures of the celebrities and maybe some of their values or films they’ve been in or however you want to assess them, make sure there’s no bad press going on right now like they just killed somebody or something, right? Then think about whether your ideal customer would buy something if they saw that person with it. That’s the big linchpin really is would that make them get their wallet out?
Sarah Shaw:
Then there’s a website called Contactanycelebrity.com. It’s I think maybe $40 or something for a month’s subscription. If you’re armed with your list, you can sit there for a few hours and get all the contact information for all of your celebrities on your list and get their manager and publicist’s information. If they don’t have any of those then maybe they’ll list their agent or their lawyer. Most have a publicist or a manager or both.
Sarah Shaw:
Then it’s really pitching them your product and why you think they would like it. A brief little intro about you and your brand, “We make these baby blankets out of organic cotton that was grown sustainably in this place. We dye it with vegetable dyes,” and whatever your story is. It doesn’t have to be a fancy story and we have the thought that maybe it is something ecological. This celebrity is ecologically minded and maybe that’s the connection that you make. You want to find the connection so it could just be, “Hey, we make thee cute blankets.” Then, “You have a baby boy and here’s a blue blanket,” or, we see that your baby is always wearing green and we make a green blanket or green clothing. Looking for how you can connect with them and then sending them a letter and if you go to the home page of my site, you can actually find out and get some free samples of letters to send the celebrities.
Sarah Shaw:
Then it’s really drafting that letter and emailing it to the gatekeeper that you found on Contact Any Celebrity and essentially pitching them. If you have a catalog and you want the celebrity to choose something from the catalog, then you can put a link to your catalog and just say, “We’d love so-and-so to peruse our catalog. Feel free to have them pick out anything that they want. We’d be happy to send it. What’s the best address?” Making it casual. We find that we have the most success when we’re the most casual with them because they’re just people too. The gatekeepers aren’t fancy.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, not fawning all over them.
Sarah Shaw:
They’re assistants, right?
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Sarah Shaw:
Yeah. If it’s something that is inexpensive enough and you could offer a sample or a product to the gatekeeper as well, I think that always builds some goodwill.
Catherine Langman:
That’s a cool idea. I like that.
Sarah Shaw:
Obviously, only if it’s affordable for you. Then hopefully, they’ll write you back and if you don’t hear back, we usually follow up every few days, maybe send it on Tuesday, follow up on Thursday or Friday. Just checking to see if you got my email. Just replying to the original email that you sent.
Sarah Shaw:
Then if you don’t hear back that week, maybe Tuesday or Wednesday of the next week, you’re sending another, checking in to see if you’d be able to help me get this to Celebrity A. If they do write back and say, “Oh, yeah. We’re passing it on. We’ll let you know if she wants to choose something or yes, go ahead and send it.” THey’ll give you an address and then you can just make a pretty package and send it off. Then you’ve got the gatekeeper’s contact info so once you know that it’s been received by the gatekeeper, we usually give it a few days and then email them and say, “Hey, saw the package was delivered on October 7th and just wondered when you’d be able to get it to Celebrity Name.”
Sarah Shaw:
They’ll tell you whatever, “We already gave it to her. We’re going to give it to her in two weeks. She’s out of the country. She’ll be back for a month,” whatever the situation is. Then you just have to make a note to follow up.
Sarah Shaw:
Then once you know they have it, it’s really stalking their social channels, seeing if they post a picture because you just never know. I mean, Eva Langoria just recently did an unboxing video of a client’s handbag she sent on her Instagram. Totally unexpected, never got a thank you note, you know what I mean?
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Sarah Shaw:
It’s not like she mailed or something. It was amazing.
Catherine Langman:
That’s so cool.
Sarah Shaw:
Yeah and tagged her and everything and thanked her. “Thanks to [Elsea 00:39:49]. I love this.” You just never know. I mean some celebrities post often on their social pages, on Instagram mostly. It’s stalking that and then if you don’t seen anything … once you know they have it then I usually wait a week or so at least and start looking. If you don’t see anything, you can message them through Instagram. “Hey, Celebrity Name, I sent you that blah-blah and just hope you’re enjoying it. If you’d like to share a picture, we’d love to see it.” Something like that. Being caszh about it. Then if there is something that’s posted or if it’s something that the celebrity could wear out or their kids could wear out or it could get photographed by a paparazzi, they could show up in People Magazine or US Weekly or something like that. You always want to check those sites too because they post the pictures there for sales.
Catherine Langman:
Oh, interesting.
Sarah Shaw:
The paparazzi does and so sometimes they’ll sell a picture of Celebrity A to People Magazine and then the next week, they’ll sell the same picture to Us Weekly and then it’s HUTCH and Star and whatever. Sometimes, you can get these big runs where it shows up in different magazines every week but it’s also your job as the designer and the maker to get the word out. If you see it, and especially if a celebrity posted that on Instagram, you want to immediately take a screenshot, send that to all the celebrity magazine editors, any other magazine media that you’re trying to get into. Of course, send it to your e-com buyers. Post it on your social channels, send it to stores that you’re trying to get into so you’re going to work this photo to death. Get it on your website, on your press page or your celebrity page, depending which one you have or maybe both and really work it to the bone because it can be worth a lot of money. You can’t count on it’s just sitting there and just making money for you if you don’t promote it.
Catherine Langman:
Yes, yeah. Totally, totally makes sense. I love the step by step there. I think that’s brilliant. I wanted to just ask because obviously working with influencers has been a thing for a few years now but how does working and gifting to celebrities differ from perhaps other non-celebrity influencers on Instagram?
Sarah Shaw:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, so one of the biggest difference is celebrities don’t ask for money. They just take the gift whereas, influencers often ask for a fee. Just to be aware of that difference and then sometimes the influencers, you need to vet them and it’s easy to buy followers. They’d be like, “Woo! She’s got two million followers.”
Catherine Langman:
It’s so true, yeah.
Sarah Shaw:
You don’t really know how real they are and also people can pay people to like their posts. You want to take a look at the comments. If there’s 4000 likes and one comment, probably not a great ratio. The other thing that you can do too and this is what I would totally do this now if I had a product line is look at the other brands that they’ve been promoting. Then call them, email them, get in touch and just say, “Hey, saw that Influencer so-and-so promoted your product last week and looks really awesome. I just was thinking of working with her and wanted to know how that went for you.”
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, that’s a great idea.
Sarah Shaw:
If she says, “Oh, yeah. I paid her 5000 but I made 50,000.” Oh, heck. I’d do that all day. I’d be like, “Can you promote me every day?”
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, exactly.
Sarah Shaw:
If they say, “I paid her 5,000 and I made $300.” Then you’re like, “Phew! Skip that one.” I think it’s really important and I don’t really know why these influencers don’t show statistics more but I think it’s really more that they just don’t know that that’s a good idea. If I was an influencer and I had really good results with the brands that I was “selling” quote-unquote and promoting on my Instagram, I’d be so happy to say, “Oh, yeah. This brand sold $50,000. This one sold $12,000.” Then you can see how your product relates to those others. I mean if they’d never sold a baby product and that’s what you have, maybe they’re not the best person.
Sarah Shaw:
There’s a lot of stylists out there that also they style big celebrities and last year, during COVID, they had nothing to do and so, they started promoting people’s products. You pay them between $1500 and $5000 depending on how many followers they have. They claim that they can sell stuff for you. I don’t really know how true that is because not that people know the stylist. A lot of them follow them because maybe they found out that they dress a certain celebrity. Unless they’ve been working their page and have really sold before, I think it can sometimes be misleading.
Sarah Shaw:
When a celebrity, when a famous person just randomly posts, it could end up not being a lot of money for you. Maybe their followers are poor and your product is expensive. I don’t know. Just because a celebrity has a different type of following where it just stands, but it can also be a whirlwind.
Catherine Langman:
Yes, quite, quite judging by some of the stories that you’ve shared.
Sarah Shaw:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, yeah. No, that’s really good distinction there and certainly pays for brand owners to be a little objective when they’re assessing any opportunities, I guess.
Sarah Shaw:
Yes, definitely. Be objective all the time. Don’t just throw your money at the first thing that comes along.
Catherine Langman:
Well, no.
Sarah Shaw:
Ask a lot of questions.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, ask a lot of questions and I mean it’s very easy for us entrepreneurs to make emotional decisions when it comes to our businesses because we do treat them a little bit like our babies sometimes.
Sarah Shaw:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Of course.
Catherine Langman:
We have to try not to do that when we’re assessing these opportunities especially if you are going to be spending money on it for sure.
Sarah Shaw:
Yes, I agree.
Catherine Langman:
You’ve been able to share some amazing stories with us today on the show and some of the tough times as well as the things that went really, really well which has been awesome. I just wanted to ask you one final question and if there’s a real top piece of advice or one last thing that you would suggest to a product-preneur coming through the ranks now who really wants to increase their brand awareness for their products, what would be one last thing that you would recommend or suggest to somebody in that position?
Sarah Shaw:
Well, I think-
Catherine Langman:
I put you on the spot now, haven’t I?
Sarah Shaw:
No, it’s okay. I just have so many ideas all the time. I think that getting PR for yourself, whether it’s through magazines or just getting tons of reviews on your site, hounding people to write reviews, getting your stuff to celebrities, I mean all of those PR angles, I think really help to build that brand credibility which is so important to make your brand seem solid these days.
Sarah Shaw:
People are out there looking around and if they see you in a magazine or on a podcast or in a top 10 such and such, sometimes the bloggers are the way to start getting people to link back to you and building that SEO. All of that this media, SEO background, I think is really important these days just make your brand seem sustainable.
Sarah Shaw:
Sometimes, do you ever go to somebody’s social media page and be like, “Oh, my god. Are they still in business? They haven’t posted in two months.” That’s the first thing I think of. It doesn’t have to be that they posted yesterday but if it’s two months, I question right away whether they’re actually still in business because it’s easy to leave their website up. You’ve already paid for it probably for a year. It doesn’t tell you. Social media, I think tells you how active somebody is and how current they are.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, I would agree.
Sarah Shaw:
I just think of all of that as media and credibility building. I just really encourage anybody listening to work on that aspect of their business every day whether you’re thinking about podcast you could be on, a startup businesses, all the side hustle podcasts out there and if you’re a mom and have a baby product, maybe mom bloggers or people in that field. If you’re in beauty, looking for beauty bloggers and people who want to try your products and talk about it and vetting them but at the same time, thinking about how you can build your presence in different places because there’s so much noise out there right now.
Catherine Langman:
Oh, absolutely.
Sarah Shaw:
You might find Facebook is really great for me and Instagram’s not or vice versa or bloggers love me and or podcasters love me, whatever you test out is your secret sauce, pursue that more and then build in the other stuff.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, really great piece of advice there and yeah, I love the suggestion of just making it a bit of a daily habit to chip away at this awareness building PR-related activities I think’s really, really important and we all should be doing that for sure.
Sarah Shaw:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Catherine Langman:
Fantastic.
Sarah Shaw:
It’s hard. It’s sometimes hard to know where to start but another good place to look is where your competitors are. If you look at their website and you’re like, “Oh, my god! They have so much press!” Well, click and look at the article and maybe it’ll show you the name of the editor. Then you can find them on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram and connect with them. Sometimes you just have to spend some time going down the rabbit’s hole to find those connections.
Catherine Langman:
It’s either going to be tough to start or it’ll be tough to stay consistent and keep going and just hold the line.
Sarah Shaw:
Yeah, no one ever said it was easy.
Catherine Langman:
We all drew that from one of those, don’t we?
Sarah Shaw:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
So good. Now you said earlier that on your website you have some sample letters that our listeners can go and grab.
Sarah Shaw:
I do.
Catherine Langman:
Do you want to just quickly tell us what the link is? We’ll obviously share it from our podcast show notes as well but share the link for our listeners at home.
Sarah Shaw:
Yes, so it’s sarahshawconsulting.com. You can go there. There’ll be a pop-up and it will say, “Do you want to get our celebrity letters?” You can just hop on that. They’ll email it to you right away, our good old autoresponder.
Catherine Langman:
Yes, yes. Love it.
Sarah Shaw:
Then it’ll give you a little bit of info on how to reach out to celebrities as well.
Catherine Langman:
Fantastic. Awesome. Well thank you so much for sharing such amazing tips as well as your own stories with us today. It’s been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show.
Sarah Shaw:
Oh, Catherine, thanks for having me. I love meeting with you.