The Ultimate Brand in Tattoo Skincare

It appears apparent in hindsight: Folks with tattoos have distinctive skincare wants. But go away it to a few new faculty graduates to see what nobody else did and launch a direct-to-consumer skincare firm for that viewers.

That was in 2019, when Drew Fallon joined two of his Miami University (Ohio) buddies who had created a facet hustle referred to as Mad Rabbit. “We had one product, one social web site, and one promoting channel,” Fallon informed me.

Two years later, the corporate hit $3 million in annual gross sales — nonetheless as a facet hustle. That’s when the three founders left their full-time jobs to be, as Fallon places it, the final word in tattoos.

He and I not too long ago mentioned the rise of Mad Rabbit. The complete audio of our dialog is embedded under. The transcript is edited for readability and size.

Eric Bandholz: Give us a fast rundown of your organization.

Drew Fallon: Mad Rabbit is the primary direct-to-consumer tattoo skincare firm. Our merchandise assist of us’ tattoo ink keep vibrant and recent for so long as doable. We present options to mass-produced merchandise which can be typically dangerous to tattooed pores and skin.

We launched as a facet hustle in 2019, the identical yr my two co-founders and I graduated from Miami University in Ohio. We all had full-time jobs for about two years after graduating. During that point, we went from zero to $3 million in income with one product, one social web site, and one promoting channel.

In the winter of 2021, we determined to do that full-time. The three of us are actually 25. We’re early in our tattoo journeys, and so is our major buyer. Many are 25 to 30 years outdated with solely a few tattoos. But tattoos could be addictive. People get one, they usually are inclined to get extra.

Bandholz: How do you attain $3 million as a facet hustle?

Fallon: For one, my co-founder Selom nailed Instagram adverts, which was our solely paid promotion. He did an unbelievable job. Our first Google Ad got here in 2021, the identical yr as our first Amazon sale.

But it primarily got here all the way down to giving individuals one thing that didn’t exist.

Bandholz: You went from a way of life model to hyper-growth.

Fallon: We had been worthwhile solely with out the wage expense of three staff. By late 2020, we had simply completed filming on Shark Tank. We didn’t know if it was going to air. We had been in the method of closing a $500,000 cope with Mark Cuban. He’s now our largest investor, having participated in subsequent financing rounds.

We launched our soothing gel in January 2021. It bought nicely. Then we created a sunscreen in March, which went berserk. We bought 10,000 items in per week. At that time, we stated, “This is a particular alternative. We have two choices. We can hold coasting, or we are able to pursue essentially the most of what this might turn out to be.” We went with the latter.

We’re constructing a model to be the final word in tattoos — method past skincare. But constructing a model is pricey. It requires loads of funding. We determined to go for it and confronted little or no competitors.

Bandholz: I assume most of your clients are girls.

Fallon: Yes. That’s appropriate — about 55% feminine. Initially we had extra male clients, however our feminine viewers grew as we launched extra merchandise. Women have a tendency to purchase extra skincare items. We’re going by means of a model refresh now to de-emphasize the masculine vibe. We’re switching to white packaging, too.

The tattoo tradition is numerous. My 18-year-old sister has three tattoos. Harley Davidson riders have many tattoos. Chefs are into tattoos, as are athletes.

Speaking to every section is a chance we haven’t cracked. We method everybody as in the event that they had been the identical. But we’re hiring individuals with segmentation expertise to construct totally different buying cadences.

For instance, a feminine may purchase the balm and take a look at the sunscreen two months later. But a male would probably buy sunscreen first after which strive the physique wash.

Bandholz: You talked about Facebook Ads. How did Mad Rabbit react to the iOS 14.5 monitoring?

Fallon: In April 2021, about 85% of our advertising and marketing spend was on Instagram. When iOS hit that May, it was just like the prepare got here off the rails. We didn’t know what was taking place. Our gross sales mirrored not solely the iOS change however the provide chain scarcity.

Fast ahead to 2022. We’re spending more cash on social than ever however at higher advertising and marketing effectivity ratios. Plus we did two large pivots.

First, we did an equity-for-services cope with Inked, a web based journal. They have about 60 million followers throughout their social media channels. They solely and aggressively promoted our model, merchandise, and content material throughout these channels in alternate for proudly owning a part of our firm. That exploded the highest of the funnel for us.

The second factor was TikTok. We have TikTok movies in the final six months with over 20 million views and 400,000 followers. They too have generated an enormous top-of-funnel effect.

With hundreds of thousands of views from TikTok and Inked, our Facebook Ads began working once more. We scaled Facebook in January 2022, and we’ve been rising month-over-month since then.

Facebook now drives a variety of our gross sales, as evidenced by our attribution modeling. We take day by day advertising by channel and day by day gross sales on our web site and Amazon and do a easy linear regression in Excel. We can discern that Facebook continues to be driving a ton of our gross sales, together with Amazon.

Bandholz: Where can individuals observe and assist you?

Fallon: Check out our website and Amazon store, or observe Mad Rabbit on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, or YouTube. I’m on Twitter and LinkedIn.