Zaffrin O’Sullivan is the founder of Five Dot Botanics, a minimal ingredients skincare brand launched in July 2019.
After initially being turned down for an investment opportunity, she successfully secured funding on the second attempt – pitching while heavily pregnant with her third child.
I invited her on to Starting to Scale with Emmie Faust to talk about her business journey to date, including how the delay in securing funding, actually resulted in perfect timing for her brand to make a disruptive impact in the tightly-packed beauty industry.
In this episode, we cover her business journey so far, including:
- How she’s creating a successful brand in a fiercely competitive space
- What she considers to be essential in a business partner
- The difference between owning a business and creating a brand
- How she spotted an industry that was ripe for disruption
- Why spending the marketing budget has been harder than anticipated
- How NOT getting funding on the first attempt actually led to perfect timing for her brand to hit the market
- How she’s matching her distribution methods to her brand values, putting connection with the consumer at the heart of the business.
- The importance of putting IP protection in place from day one, so you’re ready for investment later
Useful Links:
Five Dot Botanics: where you can buy simple yet effective skincare products with five or fewer ingredients. Open for online orders, with free shipping in the UK.
If you are looking for help to grow your business and to get ready for investment (or maybe you have it and want to spend it wisely) then you can download my Free PDF to help you scale a profitable business. I share what I have learnt over the last 17 years that I have been running businesses.
