🌴 How this skincare brand used partnerships to help find traction
Steps to find a great partnership
Hey Outliers ☀️
How’s your week going?
I was speaking to a founder friend yesterday about partnerships and how important authenticity is when it comes to finding success.
There are huge brands that spend millions in securing product placement in films or games, only to find sales don’t change at all. A waste of time, money and sometimes reputation.
Then there are small brands that find the perfect partner in an influencer and it skyrockets their growth.
The story I’m sharing today is somewhere in between and gives a good understanding of what a strong partnership could look like for your business.
Let’s get into it… 👇
Here’s what to expect today:
📰 Story: How partnerships helped this skincare brand boost revenue
🧠 Insight: Authenticity > audience size
💪🏼 DIY: How to find the right partnership opportunity for your brand
🔗 Good links: 5 types of collaboration, deep work & an extraordinary shoemaker
📰 Story: How partnerships helped this skincare brand boost revenue
SBTRCT is a young skincare brand on a mission to create high-performing skincare with a low environmental impact.
All of their products are solid state allowing them to be 100% plastic free.
Solid state is great from an environmental perspective but it does come with challenges. One is the education needed on how solid-state works and why it doesn’t mean compromising on quality.
And unless you’ve got gigantic budgets, obvious marketing channels like Google and Meta can be hard work. Educating an audience is costly and requires investment into creative formats, often video.
“Like many, we’ve found ourselves lured by the temptation to spend with Google and Meta, but it became very apparent that wasn’t going to work.” — Ben, Founder
To find a solution, SBTRCT has focused on constant experimentation. Failing as much as possible in order to learn and figure out a way forward.
“This approach breeds the best creativity and is also the most fun part of building a brand (an important ingredient no one should forget).” — Ben
Part of that experimentation included testing strategic partnerships.
Finding people who instantly recognised the value SBTRCT offers was critical and well-thought-out partnerships could be the answer.
“ …we needed to build a loyal group of advocates to help us spread the word, building our brand at a rate way beyond what advertising can deliver.” — Ben
SBTRCT built two strategic partnerships in order to reach a highly targeted group of people who would love their products.
They created their “Take A Mini Break” campaign for Plastic Free July and focused their attention on the problem with Travel Minis specifically.
To help raise awareness of the plastic waste issue and encourage those going away to "Take a Mini-Break", SBTRCT partnered with a multi-award-winning, activist and illustrator Jasmine Hortop and room2 (the world's 1st fully net zero hotel).
They were able to reach new audiences that were well aligned with their ethos and values, and would likely understand or at least be highly curious to learn how the products work.
Jasmine lives in a camper van by the sea and all her art is focused on contributing to bettering the earth. Her audience is the perfect fit for SBTRCT.
room2’s customers are very environmentally conscious as well as looking for an incredible experience during their stay.
Having the ability to put SBTRCT samples in the rooms and run a giveaway for two nights at the hotel was fantastic for growing our following of people who really do care about these issues.
Both partnerships were simple but well-targeted.
“Campaigns like this where the fit between partners is authentic naturally translate into sales.” — Ben
July was SBTRCT’s biggest month of the year from a revenue perspective as a result.
🧠 Insight: Authenticity > audience size
Partnerships can work wonders for young businesses but the aim is to reach more of your ideal target customer (people that will get it straight away), not the biggest audience you can find. People will see straight through a fake partnership and that can be disastrous for a small brand. Any partnership needs to be authentic and feel natural for both audiences.
💪🏼 DIY: 5 ways to partner for success
Look for companies of a similar size who share your interests
Find artists who align with your brand and are likely to share a similar audience
Partner with a competitor (it might seem unusual but even brands such as Vimeo and YouTube have worked together to push their industry forward)
Identify a non-profit or charitable organisation that aligns with your values
Join forces with an influencer who fits your audience profile (smaller is better)
🔗 Good links
🔗 5 Types of brand collaboration + examples
🔗 Deep Work: Rules for a Focused Success in a Distracted World
🔗 A shoemaker who only makes 100 pairs a year
💌 Tell us what you’d like help with…
We started this newsletter for entrepreneurs just like you, and we want it to be as helpful as it possibly can. So tell us what you’d like help with and we’ll dig into it.
Or if there’s a brand you’d like to know more about, let us know and we’ll reach out to them.
Until next week…
Keep being an Outlier,
J + K