Ryan Babenzien: Growing Jolie from $0 to $28M in Revenue in 2 Years

Ryan is the CEO and Founder of Jolie Skin, which, after launching in 2022 with their Jolie Shower Head, quickly reached $4 million in sales in their first year and $28 million in 2023.

Even more impressive about this meteoric growth though is that it has been done:

• With only 3 full-time employees.
• No institutional capital raised.
• Profitably since pretty much day 1.
• And with an amazing subscription model component that has Jolie on pace to hover around $20 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2024.

Before Jolie, Ryan held numerous positions in the consumer and eCommerce world including at Puma and K-Swiss, as well as starting his own companies, most notably, GREATS, which is a footwear company that sold premium sneakers online as a DTC pioneer and was eventually bought by Steve Madden.

In this episode, we discuss:

• His background and lessons from previous experiences as a Hollywood Agent, Puma and K-Swiss, and building GREATS.
• The three-pillar framework that led to the idea for Jolie.
• Importance of customer education, especially as a market creator.
• Market size and opportunity for Jolie in the U.S. and globally.
• Dupe-swapping: the mechanics and who can execute it.
• Jolie's massive UGC machine and how to kickstart UGC from 0 to 1.
• Anti-discounting stance.
• Jolie's comparison to SaaS.
• The future of Jolie and an ideal outcome for the business.
• One SaaS tool Ryan wishes he had at Jolie right now.
• The other business ideas he thought of that fit his three-pillar framework.
• And much more!

Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn and shop Jolie here.

The eCommerce Innovators podcast is brought to you by Alia.

Alia is a popup that lets Shopify stores reward shoppers with discounts for learning more about their brand, story, and products through an engaging customer education experience.

Alia is trusted by leading brands like Firebelly Tea, which was founded by the President of Shopify, Bibado, Urban Smokehouse, and MASA Chips.

Urban Smokehouse, drove an additional $100k+ in sales per month and grew their popup signup rate by 184% in the first 30 days with Alia.

Connect with the host, Cory, on Twitter.