RAQUEL BOURIS - WHO IS ELIJAH
ON HIRING (AND FIRING) HER FRIENDS
Our guest for today is Raquel Bouris. She is the founder of Who Is Elijah, a beautiful fragrance brand that absolutely took off during the pandemic.
Raquel was inspired to create a perfume after a trip to Coachella, and what started as a little side project to a scent just for her, has now taken on a life of its own and grown into a multimillion-dollar brand.
Raquel doesn’t come from a beauty or fragrance background. Before launching her brand, she worked as an EA, and it was an awesome soft introduction to what it takes to own and run a big business.
You’ll learn:
How she generated traction early on and secured DJs as a retailer with a slick marketing deck
Her ambitions to scale into the US, and what Sephora US asked her to do before they ranged her brand
In 2021, why her accountant told her she’d have to radically cut costs or she wouldn’t have a business in a few months
Why she hired two of her best mates into the business, and what it was like to fire them
How she’s built confidence in her own skills along the way
We hope you enjoyed this conversation – for more podcast action follow us on Instagram @lady.brains, or sign up to our monthly newsletter at www.ladybrains.com
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“We created what is now ‘His, Her’. And Matt liked it, but he was a little bit turned off about the price. There was a minimum order and it was like 200 bottles, so 20 litres to fill about roughly 200 bottles. And that was sort of the turning point when Matt just sort of said, look, I think that’s gonna take us a really, really long time to sell it. And he just wasn’t financially ready to fully commit. So that is when we sort of parted ways, very amicably. ”
“I was really feeling the momentum then. It was the first time I really thought okay, I want to do this full-time. How can I quit my job? There was a certain amount of money that I wanted to make before I quit. So I was lying in bed one night and I was just on LinkedIn and I was scrolling, trying to find fragrance buyer from David Jones. In my head I thought if I could secure a major retailer like David Jones, surely I can quit my job then. So I DM’d Kate, who I still speak to now, and I think it was two days later, and she said it sounded really interesting and she’d love to talk to me more. ”
“We’ve got 300 wholesale partners and they don’t always pay on time. So there are times where we’ve got close to $400,000 owing, and 40% of that is overdue and we don’t know when we’re going to get it. I pretty much drained Adam and my life savings for Who is Elijah. ”
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