Today on the show we’re learning from Lucy Goff, the founder of LYMA. If you haven’t heard of LYMA before, it was started in 2018 as a powerful supplement specifically created to change people's lives by re-engineering nature to create products that actually live up to the promise and improve your health. LYMA fuses together wellness and technology, to lead the new WellTech category.
Lucy started this business after suffering serious health issues and meeting a scientist by chance who helped changed the course of her life. We talk through what they’ve been able to create, how she garnered a 5,000-person waitlist before launch, creating a product so good that it’s organically endorsed by celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Hailey Bieber, and what approach they take to marketing high-ticket items.
When it comes to the marketing piece, Lucy really opened my eyes to something I hadn't thought of before. Marketing historically was relatively simple. Now it’s much more complicated. Awareness is the key to having success long-term. If no one knows about your brand, no one knows about your product. It’s a really crowded space because it all goes through the same social channels to the same audience. That’s why you need to do something different. Understanding what doesn’t work and making those mistakes helps you understand what will work ultimately.
One definitive point of difference is to be the first brand to disrupt and move the supplement category along, as LYMA is. A story such as this one is something that works brilliantly for scoring those first PR pieces. Lucy made sure to make LYMA an all-around PR-focused product ahead of the launch. Knowing that a point of difference would naturally lead to interest, they kept their pre-launch effort pretty innocuous and vague to really hone in on that FOMO effect. It is this strategy that guaranteed a mighty 5000 people waitlist before launch and their first 1000 customers.
Please note, this transcript has been copy pasted without the lovely touch of a human editor. Please expect some typos!
Yeah, my name is Lucy Goff and I founded a company called lima um That in an industry and a supplement industry where even 90% of ingredients are not proven to work at all lima is different with the only medical grade supplement in the industry were proven to work in peer reviewed studies.
And that is the difference between lima and the rest of the market. When you say medical grade studies, what does that actually mean? Medical grade studies. So it's interesting because if you were to take a pharmaceutical drugs. So if you take the covid vaccine for example you wouldn't trust Pfizer or astrazeneca to say oh it's safe. It works. You know this is the dose and everything like that because they are going to financially benefit from selling that product to you. So you wait for the peer reviewed evidence to come in. So for the trials to have been deemed robust enough to be safe enough to be nontoxic to you know every single parameter that you would expect as a consumer for them to be reviewed and published by doctors and scientists that have got no financial benefit to that drug being brought to market and by the same token the supplement industry because it has no regulation in place.
Uh and you know you can you can put out a crushed up herb and sell it to a consumer by the same token. You know you would surely expect if you are taking a supplement to have a health benefit that the ingredients have gone through the same rigorous process and have been proven at specific dosages to work and provide a health benefit, That particular brand of ingredient and that is where lima differs from the rest of the market, in that every single one of our ingredients is patented and has got published peer reviewed evidence to prove that it's not toxic, that it's stable in your body, that it's bio available, that it works the length of time you should take it for all these different parameters have been tested and not just validated by the company that made the ingredients. Of course they're going to say it works, but actually by a team of non biased doctors which is the level of evidence and and trust that the consumer should really be looking for.
And I imagine, you know the the way that I feel about supplements is you take a supplement and you don't really know if it works or if it doesn't and it could be that placebo effect or it could actually be helping but you don't really see the difference necessarily. So there's a lot of education and trust that needs to be instilled in a consumer. So having that piece of the puzzle as well also shows someone, oh yes, like I can trust this brand versus like getting a vitamin D. Tablet off the shelf, I think there's a lot of misconceptions about supplements and the irony is that you know, if you eat a really good balanced diet, a healthy balanced diet you can get your head of vitamins from your diet and your best place to do that because the body has been designed you know if you were to eat an apple you would get far more nutrients and benefits from that process of eating an apple or eating an orange or eating a piece of fish than actually taking the nutrients in a supplement form.
So you know there are a few, there are a few vitamins and minerals that you can't get an effective dosage through food and that's like vitamin K. Two vital In D. three. So there are certain nutrients that you do need to supplement with. However the true premise of the supplement is to supplement with nutrients that you cannot get an effective doses through food and that's why in lima we only formulate with ingredients that you can't find in a healthy balanced diet which is the true premise of the supplement. That is so interesting. What was getting you interested in supplements in the first place and what was taking you down this pathway of starting this business? Well I never I never even thought starting a business or running a business would ever be in my in my life path after I had my daughter nine years ago I was really ill after I had her and I actually caught septicemia I was in hospital for weeks while they battled to save my life, fortunately they did.
But you know, it came at a cost. I left hospital and I just couldn't function. I couldn't function as a person, let alone anybody that was now responsible for a baby. And I was going to all these, you know, these top Harley Street physicians and I was saying, you know, I just feel wretched. I can't even like I don't even feel confident enough to lift my baby. Um you know, what can you do for me? And they were, you know, they looked at all my notes and you know, they took blood and they were saying, well, there's nothing wrong with you. You know, the infection's gone and that was their benchmark for me being able to function. That, you know, on paper, I looked healthy, I can tell you in reality I could not function. And it was really when my mom took me to one of those, um I was very lucky. She took me to a beautiful spot in Geneva um to rest for a few days.
And it was there that the spa didn't help me. You know, it was very nice to, you know, sit by the lake with with with a blanket over me. But you know, it was there that I had one of those life changing moments and that was bumping into to one of the world's leading professors in the field of longevity and preventative disease. A guy called dr paul Clayton who happened to be there on the conference and you know I was chatting to him about my story and he said well you know I've got no time for the supplement market at all, It's a load of you know, whatever nothing really works, it doesn't there's no legislation in place that means it has to work its full of factory floor scrape. I mean it was just going on a long um and I was just thinking about my huge cupboard of supplements at home that was perhaps not not not doing what it needed to. Um and he explained there was a hidden category of nutrition, a hidden category of supplementation that actually was proven to work, but it was not available to consumers because it didn't fit in with the price structure with the commercial structure of the supplement market.
And he I don't know whether he just wanted to get rid of me or took pity on me, but he said look I'll send you some ingredients to the post and I know that you will get better. And I came back and every day I was waiting for these supplements to arrive and they didn't and after a couple of weeks they arrived I took them and literally three or four weeks later I was back at work, I just felt myself again um and that was really the lightbulb moment where I realized that if if I was suffering like this there are millions of other people that would be suffering too whereby the medical world wasn't able to help them because the pharmaceutical model is very much geared towards taking away a symptom once you get ill it doesn't deal with preventative health at all and it doesn't deal with kind of you know um tonics that help you get better, help you feel better. And that was the moment where I asked for Clayton if he would consider coming in with me and we launch this medical grade supplement together.
Um and after a lot of persuasion, he he said yes, he he he was he was explaining it would be a very, very difficult road to bring this supplement to market and he was totally right, but you know, we we we did it and and four years later we've got you know a successful global business. So what year are we talking about that you is that 2017 because I think you launched in 2018, right? We launched in 2018 in February 2018. But this was a conversation that I had with him a few years before, I mean it took a year just to find a factory that would deal with this set of ingredients, you know that in itself was was a huge challenge because you know there are thousands of supplement factories and they're all very good, however you can only work with the ingredients that they already work with which are the cheap organic and generic ingredients that, you know, their bulk buy in from mainly china and you know, they're not proven to do anything, but that's where the markup is.
So, you know, for instance, tumeric in an organic tumeric in a factory is a like a pound a kilo. The medical grade tumeric that we use in lima, which is hydro Kirk is nearly £300 a kilo. So you see that it doesn't fit in with the commercial structure of the supplement market and it's not really beneficial for supplement factories. The deal with this set of ingredients because you can't make the same mark up that you can from using cheap generic ingredients. But fundamentally, you know, the the irony is that tumeric is actually placebo, you know, the tumeric market's worth hundreds of billions of dollars, but actually, organic tumeric as a placebo, you'll never get an active level into your plasma to have an anti inflammatory effect that your body can't absorb it. And then you get these huge, you know, you get these other water soluble to mix the patented water soluble tumeric and what they fail to do, you know what consumers don't realize about those is that the majority of the ingredient is actually made up of the carrier system that makes it water soluble, so at least negligible amounts for the actual humanoids.
So there's only one extract in the market that actually is going to be effective and that's the one that we use in lima because only 10% of the ingredient is accounted for by the carrier system and therefore you leave 90% of the ingredients to feature the humanoids which are the which is what's going to have an anti inflammatory effect. So there's huge loads of nuances in the industry that the consumer doesn't know because fundamentally it's a very political space and it's crazy that the supplement market does not have robust legislation to really protect the consumer and to ensure that the consumer has a beneficial effect by taking them bloody hell, it's tough out there with the supplement market, my goodness. And it's so you know, as you're explaining these things, these are words I've never heard of, I obviously didn't know this, it's it's really it's crazy, I'm interested to know how did you actually get dr paul Clayton to like say yes and be excited about building a supplement brand that was so hard to do, I guess, you know, he he's an academic and you know, he's got a brilliant mind, he's a genius, but he just was he's very much not anybody who is commercially driven.
So you know the enticement of of launching a brand just did not like his fire, but it was really the excitement of what we were doing, I guess that you know, we would be the first brand in the world to actually move the supplement industry on and you know, I spent months trying to convince them that, you know, you're you're in this fight, you know, against the supplement market, you can only start to change it if you're involved in something that actually is going to change the category. And by launching lima, that's exactly what we've done, wow goodness, it sounds like this kind of business and this kind of business model obviously requires a lot of upfront capital, lot of working capital, even just to get to the point of, you know, R and D and then through to minimum orders and production, packaging etcetera, it's a high price point, it's a very luxury brand.
I am imagine all touchpoints are extremely beautiful and you know, nice to look at, nice to touch what's the money piece of the story and how are you approaching funding in the beginning, especially as someone who, you know, you said you had no idea about launching a business, you never had that in your kind of vision to being like, all right, well what do we do now, how do we get this brand to life? So this was another big challenge, I have to be honest, it wasn't a small amount of money that we needed to launch lima, I went out to a load of investment companies and it was very quickly, you know, a unanimous no from every one of them. Um they did not have any confidence that the consumer would want to spend 100 and £50 a month, as opposed to say like £20 a month on a on a supplement that worked. Um, and, you know, I think it's very, it is very difficult when you're trying to start a business not to make spontaneous decisions when it comes to funding, you know, although every business needs money to get going, where you take that money from in the first instance is really important because it can have huge implications later down the line.
You know, I was adamant that it wouldn't be, we wouldn't take money from crowdfunding and that, you know, you've always got that wealthy relation, you really tempted to call that maybe haven't spoken to for a long time. And, you know, lots of people do choose friends and family to raise the initial funds, but, you know, I'm very aware that that comes with a really big moral obligation, which can then be really challenging if things don't go well, you know, investing at an emotional level, might not be the right thing moving forward. So my, you know, myself and my husband, we took the huge risk and, you know, we were, it was not responsible of us at all, but we put everything on the line, we? Re mortgaged everything and we funded the business ourselves and that could have been the daft ist thing we ever did, but, you know, it paid off.
Are you able to share? How much, how much did you have to put in? I can't even, I can't share but it wasn't a small amount of money, it really wasn't. But you know I think because it was everything that we had that was on the line, you know we did our homework, you know everybody starts with the intention that you're going to succeed, it will succeed. But you know I think you've got to just really be honest about your chances of success and never answer the questions that you know, always only answer the difficult questions. Can you answer the difficult questions? Forget every single positive associated with that business and only focus on the negatives, which is what we did, which is what's an example of that. Like what's a difficult question. Well you know why would somebody spend 100 and £50 a month on a supplement that was going to work? You know, they never have done before.
It's a totally new proposition. How are you going to change a global market that has existed at a certain price point for decades? You know with something that's different I think, you know, knowing what customer, we were going to get our route to market, how we were going to become profitable, How we were going to secure our 1st 1000 customers. You know these all had to be watertight and we felt that they were watertight and and that's why we did it. I was always fascinated by what jo Malone did. Where she a commodity that there was a candle that everybody got from the supermarket. She repackaged it and and charge a different price point made it into a luxury lifestyle statement from the home. And by the same token I felt that there was a huge opportunity in the world of supplements to do that. Um you know a great idea is not good enough. If you can't sell it it's pointless.
So um all these and then you know after we launched and we sold out within two weeks. So you know we we knew that you know we were onto a winner. The irony was all those investment companies that turned me down in the first place then came back and went well see you've launched now you know we can we invest in it. And it was like no because if you doubted me once something will go wrong down the line and you will doubt me again. So actually when we got our first round of investment from a V. C. T. It was a V. C. T. That we had never spoken to in the past. So we're all about a fresh page when you say V. C. T. What is that? I haven't heard the t venture capital Trust Trust got it. Okay. Right. New for me haven't heard that one. If you're a small business owner and you manage your own fulfillment. You've probably heard of the Dymo label printer.
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I'd love to kind of deep dive into what you were doing to build that waitlist what was the blueprint of getting to your 1st 1000 customers. So getting to the 1st 1000 customers, my background was pr so that was my career as a journalist first and I spent a good few years NPR so I made it all very pr focus before we launched. We got one celebrity to post something on their social channels. And when you look at lima in the copper hammered copper vessel, you don't instantly know what it was. And we had like a solid copper members card. It all looked very kind of innocuous and it's amazing once one person post something and it looks a bit different that you start to get interest from other people and you know people didn't really know what lima was. We had one celebrity that contacted us asking if they could join our concierge.
Um you know, nobody really knew what it was. So and we kept it quite vague, so in the first instance it was really kind of we created that fomo um whereby people wanted to know what we were launching and we got some two really, really big pr hits and it kind of took off from there and from the first two big pr heads, we got our 1st 1000 customers, wow, that's so crazy because pr can go kind of two ways, it can either totally hit and totally work or just, I've heard so many times on the show, it does nothing. Yeah, I guess there must be a secret formula there. Well there is a formula and it was only because I was in pr that I knew what the formula was. You know, you've got to I think because I was a journalist before I went into pr I knew what the newspaper would want.
I always gave them the full story. So it needs to have every single piece of the pie, it's got to have something new, had celebrity, it had case study. You know, it kind of had every single element. If you just have like product pr whereby it's just a picture on a page of the product, then nobody really knows much about it when it's not a commodity. So obviously if it's something like a lipstick or a bag or a jacket, then all you really need to do is see the picture of that commodity when something's not the commodity. So with something like lima where you're buying into a health benefit that you can't see on the page, can't see what eight hour sleep feels like looks like on the page, you can't see what increased focus looks like on the page. You can't you can't see increased immunity. All these things have to be explained through trusted case studies through a trusted media outlet.
So it's not just the case of just getting the product on the page, it's got to tell the whole story. Yeah, that's so true now that I think about when you, when you sum it up like that, I'm like, oh yeah, that does make a lot of sense to do it that way. That is correct. So in that first year you have the two, you know, first hits of PR goes really well, it gets the ball rolling. What happens next? What does that next year in business look like from, you know, to keep the momentum going? Well, you know, I guess we launched exclusively on our website. So at lima dot life and the next stage after initially launched, we had all these people contact us from all over the world, were only launching in the UK to start off with. So the next piece in the puzzle was to get international shipping. So, so we quickly scaled our business in a matter of weeks to launch global shipping from our website and that takes you to a global audience.
The next stage was to agree on what retailers were going to work with. We were only ever going to work with a few global halo retailers because we launched primarily as a dtc business. And that business model still stands today. So with a few halo retailers globally, such as Net Support Harrods, Harvey Nichols, but you know, the reality is that we don't make a huge markup on supplement and the margins don't really work for us wholesale. So, um we knew that the halo accounts that we got had to really be the ultimate ones and that's why we went with Netta Porta for our first global partner and that really takes you to a different audience and you know, it's quite a big step going to into retail because you know, you very much protected your brand on your website, it's like, it's like having a baby, you know, you just want to spend time with that baby for the first few weeks, first few months, and then you kind of got to cast an open and they go to school by the same token, you know, you have to kind of go to retailers and work with retailers and trust them with your product.
So we went with Netta Porta first and then we went in the UK with harvey Nichols and in the U S went with Bergdorf Goodman and Saks and we then got a proper first round of funding from Pembroke Vct in the december. So from the february, launching in the february to the december, we kind of went on a huge lifetime journey that actually was only a few months from launching to getting our funding in. Um and then you get then you've got all new set of challenges and that, you know, you got to recruit and you know, move from a kitchen table, which is, you know, the kitchen table that I'm on now into into an office and start scaling up and with that comes a different set of challenges. Yeah, absolutely, and since then you've obviously started to launch a number of different products, including your kind of most recent product, the lima laser, The high price point laser.
I'd love to get into again the marketing of that how you kind of you know approached something that required FDA approvals and medical grade technology and all these other challenges that you must have been facing. Yeah I think you know the leaner supplement disrupted the supplement sector with the category of supplementation that worked and by the same token we knew that our next product had to be another category, disrupting Moment. And you know we work with over 20 scientists now globally who are all coming back with the latest and greatest scientific developments in different fields and everything was really exciting. But nothing felt like really spine tingling Lee incredible that spine tingly incredible. You can tell that. Yeah. English wasn't one of my strong points is No, I love it.
Um Sorry go on. Yeah. Doctor I was in Germany and he was looking at a 62 year old man's needs that had been treated with low level laser therapy to rebuild cartilage in one of his knees. And there's this huge team of doctors that we're looking at all, all the different parameters, all the different benefits. And He just had like a real lightbulb moment in that he thought well forget what's going on inside the knee, the skin on the knee that had been treated looked about 20 years younger than the skin on his other knee. And he then realized that the at home cosmetic light device industry was heavily based around led and led only came after low level laser therapy was only developed because low level laser therapy was not allowed to be used at home because obviously laser is a potentially dangerous light source. You can't start bringing a powerful laser into the home. It was not legal which is why the Led market boomed because it was a cheap technology and it was safe to use at home.
And he realized that actually if we could engineer this technology into an equally powerful laser that was being used in the hospital but made it safe to use at home then this technology was well is 100 times more powerful than LED. It would totally change the face of the at home cosmetic market. So the next challenge was making it you know, engineering this device into a little portable laser that you could use at home which took some time and then getting FDA approval took just as long just as long a time. Because you know just the irony is actually the FDA for supplements. You know you can be FDA approved for your supplement by literally just submitting the supplement label to the FDA. And if they don't get back to you in 21 days it means it's FDA approved.
So there's very little you need to do to get a supplement approved by the FDA. However for at home cosmetic devices, it is totally another game. You know, they are so hot to trot on safety on you know it's like the tests that you need to do for the FDA on another level to any test that you need to do for the rest of world like what what do you have to do? So one of the tests that, I mean it's all around safety and obviously working with a 500 million watt near infrared laser where the previous legal limits at home lasers was between five and 20 mila Watts, wow, this is this is like a whole new category and that's why the lima laser is the first FDA cleared clinic grade laser to be approved for use at home. So it really is a whole new category. Um one of the tests we had to do was if you put the lima laser in a microwave at what temperature did the battery blow up?
I mean like you have to cover, you have to know at what point does it not work if you run it over. I mean like I'm telling you the lima laser will not work. If you run it over, you probably you could kill yourself if you run yourself, you know if you get run over, it's not been, it's not been designed to run over anything. Um but no, it was a very very difficult process but you know, it was just the world's most incredible day when we actually got the approval through because it is such a revolutionary piece of technology. It is the only laser that you can use at home that does not damage any cell in the process of renewal. It works off a totally different premise to every other technology that's out there and that's why it's the first laser that can be used on all skin types and tones, which is, you know, which is a first for inclusive beauty goodness.
It sounds amazing. I'm interested to know about the marketing strategy for this and if you followed the same kind of approach kind of leading with Pr or if you, you know, went down the route of more specific celebrities or influencer marketing or paid advertising or what the kind of approach was to get the word outside of your existing customer base, I think, you know, if you look at marketing historically, it was relatively simple, you know, you advertise, people see it and then they buy it. But now marketing is much more complicated. It's really awareness, that's the key to have success long term. If nobody knows about your brand, they won't know about your products and I guess unfortunately as good as all the digital channels are to access customers, it's a really, really crowded space because it all goes through the same social channels who are targeting the same audience. So you kind of like a tiny tiny dot in a massive world of big money chasing the same customer.
And so this is why you need to do something different. When we launched lima with the supplement, we didn't have a database, we were unknown and we got our 1st 1000 customers through PR PR is still a very important piece in lima's marketing mix today, but you know, when we launched a laser, we obviously had a database of supplement customers who were spending 1000 £800 a year on the supplement. So we, we had a robust database of customers who will be interested in the laser, but what kind of really works for us is a blend of different activity that targets customers on the different channels. So not it's not one thing that works on its own, it's like a really complex collection of balanced activities where you understand the customer's needs and the purchasing processes and for that you need a complex method of communication with the different customers. So it's really by kind of only understanding what doesn't work and making those mistakes will help you come up with what works, you know, ultimately, do you have an example of what didn't work for you or something that you tried?
That was a fail? Yeah, so it's what I go back to before seeing the beautiful copper vessel on its own with the beautiful copper pill, people assume that you're just paying all the money for the beautiful copper vessel, when in reality you're actually paying for the ingredients that go inside the pill, you know, you get a lot of bang for your buck with copper, it's not gold, it's copper, but it looks, it looks beautiful, but you're seriously not paying for the copper vessel, you're paying for the ingredients that go inside the capsule. You know, if you have to buy the ingredients in lima separately from a reputable retailer, you pay a hell of a lot more than you would buy bang lima. And by the same token, when you look at the lima laser, it just looks like a black torch, can't see the huge, hugely powerful feat of engineering that's gone inside that to bring a clinic grade laser into the home.
So it's really about telling a story for us, It's about telling case studies, it's about engaging with audiences whereby they have got an issue that you can resolve. So it could be um, people that can't sleep. So you're targeting people that can't sleep. A known audience of people that can't sleep with a solution that will give you eight hours sleep targeting stressed people with a proven solution that will bring down your quarters or levels. So it's about telling multiple different stories to an audience that it would resonate with. It's not about one, It's not about just one element of that. You've really got to give the full 360 tail, you've got to have the beginning the middle and the end the hooks, that's what's going to resonate with people I saw when I was looking through your instagram, you've partnered with people like Hailey Bieber and Chiara ferragni, which is obviously, you know, huge celebrities when you for example, work with someone like Chiara ferragni who's using your product in a video, Are you approaching them to build a paid partnership or are you sending it as a gift or have they discovered it through another means?
Through your marketing? No, we're not officially working with any of these people. These are just people that have got a laser, you know, Hailey Bieber was introduced to the laser through a facial with Joanna Czech Joanna check with using the laser. So lima is a very, very organic brand. You know, it creates authentic conversations that spread, it's not, we don't pay these people to work with us. It's not, that's not the strategy that we, that we have, wow, that is just amazing. And so for someone like Kiara, do you know how she came across the product? Just through a friend of hers? Gosh, isn't that the dream? Yeah, and I guess that speaks for itself, It does, you know, if you, if you see somebody, I know I've done it, you know, I do myself, you know, if you see somebody and they look great, you know, oh my God, you know, you're looking looking amazing if you had any work done, you know, and if somebody says no, but I've just been using the lima laser and you can actually see a visible difference, then, you know, friends want to help friends and likewise, if you can't sleep and your friend can't sleep or your friend is suffering from the menopause or you know, any, any form of suffering and you find something that helps you want to share it with your friend, you know, you want her to feel great too.
So it really does go organically viral within communities. What advice can you leave us for founders who are kind of wanting to launch products in that high ticket space? Well, the irony is that, you know, lima is more expensive than other brands, but it actually offers great value. You know, if you went to the doctor and you couldn't sleep and you ask for a sleeping tablet and said, well I can't, I can't give you a sleeping tablet, but I can give you this patch and you put it on your skin and it will give you eight hours sleep every night and it costs £5 a day to rent that patch, You would rent that patch for £5 a day and lima cost £5 a day. You know, we what we, it was always something that I was very committed to, that I wanted lima to be affordable for The majority of people and you know, the majority of people in the UK and the us, they've got £5 a day that they might spend on a coffee on buying lunch that they could make at home.
You know, it was don't buy that expensive bottle of wine in the restaurant, don't buy that jumper that you don't really need. Um you know, sleep, stress, focus, performance, energy, these are all fundamentals to your life. You know, It's something that you deserve, you deserve to invest in yourself and by the same token, the laser, yes, it is £2,000. However, how many people get Botox, spend £500 every three months on Botox. You know, if you had to make a choice, would you prefer to invest your money in something that you could use every day at home Or spend £500 every three months on boat docks. You know, if you can do both. But you know, there are always ways that you can trade off as to whether you can make the investment to purchase the two products that we have in Lima. Absolutely. And so I guess for anyone listening who is in that space of higher ticket, it's around really showing the value and showing why someone would purchase that over potentially something else.
The storytelling. Yeah. And also, you know, it's not as I say, it's not that we're making a huge markup that our products don't work on a traditional wholesale model. You know, these are really expensive products for us to produce and you know, even as products have all gone up over the past few years, 20% whatever I can assure you the what we've done is try and make sure that our products do not go up in value at all and we've managed to retain the price that we did when we launched four years ago and that's literally by having you know more people that are buying the products so we've managed to negotiate better terms with our suppliers. So you know that's kind of our commitment I guess to our customers. That's amazing wow. Really impressive.
So question number one is, what's your, why? Why are you doing what you're doing every single day to help the millions of people who don't feel good or don't feel as though they look their best to help people look and feel their best. Gosh, it's amazing. You can help. Absolutely. Question number two is what has been your favorite marketing moment so far? Um, I guess winning the fast company's most innovative award for the lima laser. Um that was complete spine tingling moment. That was a good one, congratulations by the way, Question # three, What is your go to business resource? If you were to pick a book or a podcast or a newsletter? I guess I would, I probably wouldn't pick any of those and I'd have to say the team at lima.
Everyone has got incredible insight has come from different industries, all different industries. You know, it's not necessarily from helpful beauty. I think applying those learnings to a different industry is where you get the magic. I love that question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM or PM rituals and habits that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated. De lima supplement. I tell you, I was, I told you before I just had a baby a few weeks ago when you're pregnant. You can't take lima because you can't take anything, you know, nothing's been really tested on pregnant women. So I had to stop taking lima for nine months and I got to when I stopped taking it two weeks in after stopping taking it. I was thinking yeah I feel pretty good. Maybe you know I don't know what it was doing. You know I was thinking maybe I don't need it anymore anyway like four weeks later I couldn't sleep.
You know everything went back to what I was before I started taking lima. So I really appreciated having a baby and started taking them again and it genuinely gets me through the day goodness can't wait to try it. Question number five is what's been your worst money mistake in the business? Oh God this is something that I genuinely did when we moved into our new head office last september I bought the world's most ridiculously priced chair for um just as you walked in and it really was the world's biggest waste of money. And when it arrived I realized it was a doll's chair that I bought. It arrived in this little box. It was I just looked at the picture, I looked at the measurements and it was it was actually a doll's chair that I bought.
So I sent it back. How Much was it? It was £6,000. What is so funny! Oh my God at least you're able to return it. My goodness! No. Well I think I I think in the end I just annoyed the guy so much that he took it back because I want to hear from this woman again. Ever. Oh my gosh I feel like this, this question that answer blends with my, my final question, which is, but maybe you have some more is what's just a crazy story that you can share? Good, bad or otherwise in your entrepreneurial journey so far? Well, I think I've really exposed myself the last question, so I'll just say something good for those. I guess seeing waking up and seeing kim Kardashian using the laser. Oh, Great one. When did that happen a few weeks ago?
Oh my gosh, Holy moly, that's crazy. I watched an interview with her recently where she was saying, you know, she doesn't get fillers and she doesn't get any, have any work. And she was saying, you know, I invest in good quality products. Like I spend a lot on my skin care, but I don't have like, I don't know what term is, but like work done on my face, I just invest in the best interesting. So yeah, I think I will never buy another chair ever again. Oh my gosh, well, thank you so much lucy for coming on the show and telling us all about lima, it sounds absolutely amazing. Such a crazy product for health and wellness and sleep. My goodness, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a real, real pleasure. Really enjoyed it.
And that is the difference between lima and the rest of the market. When you say medical grade studies, what does that actually mean? Medical grade studies. So it's interesting because if you were to take a pharmaceutical drugs. So if you take the covid vaccine for example you wouldn't trust Pfizer or astrazeneca to say oh it's safe. It works. You know this is the dose and everything like that because they are going to financially benefit from selling that product to you. So you wait for the peer reviewed evidence to come in. So for the trials to have been deemed robust enough to be safe enough to be nontoxic to you know every single parameter that you would expect as a consumer for them to be reviewed and published by doctors and scientists that have got no financial benefit to that drug being brought to market and by the same token the supplement industry because it has no regulation in place.
Uh and you know you can you can put out a crushed up herb and sell it to a consumer by the same token. You know you would surely expect if you are taking a supplement to have a health benefit that the ingredients have gone through the same rigorous process and have been proven at specific dosages to work and provide a health benefit, That particular brand of ingredient and that is where lima differs from the rest of the market, in that every single one of our ingredients is patented and has got published peer reviewed evidence to prove that it's not toxic, that it's stable in your body, that it's bio available, that it works the length of time you should take it for all these different parameters have been tested and not just validated by the company that made the ingredients. Of course they're going to say it works, but actually by a team of non biased doctors which is the level of evidence and and trust that the consumer should really be looking for.
And I imagine, you know the the way that I feel about supplements is you take a supplement and you don't really know if it works or if it doesn't and it could be that placebo effect or it could actually be helping but you don't really see the difference necessarily. So there's a lot of education and trust that needs to be instilled in a consumer. So having that piece of the puzzle as well also shows someone, oh yes, like I can trust this brand versus like getting a vitamin D. Tablet off the shelf, I think there's a lot of misconceptions about supplements and the irony is that you know, if you eat a really good balanced diet, a healthy balanced diet you can get your head of vitamins from your diet and your best place to do that because the body has been designed you know if you were to eat an apple you would get far more nutrients and benefits from that process of eating an apple or eating an orange or eating a piece of fish than actually taking the nutrients in a supplement form.
So you know there are a few, there are a few vitamins and minerals that you can't get an effective dosage through food and that's like vitamin K. Two vital In D. three. So there are certain nutrients that you do need to supplement with. However the true premise of the supplement is to supplement with nutrients that you cannot get an effective doses through food and that's why in lima we only formulate with ingredients that you can't find in a healthy balanced diet which is the true premise of the supplement. That is so interesting. What was getting you interested in supplements in the first place and what was taking you down this pathway of starting this business? Well I never I never even thought starting a business or running a business would ever be in my in my life path after I had my daughter nine years ago I was really ill after I had her and I actually caught septicemia I was in hospital for weeks while they battled to save my life, fortunately they did.
But you know, it came at a cost. I left hospital and I just couldn't function. I couldn't function as a person, let alone anybody that was now responsible for a baby. And I was going to all these, you know, these top Harley Street physicians and I was saying, you know, I just feel wretched. I can't even like I don't even feel confident enough to lift my baby. Um you know, what can you do for me? And they were, you know, they looked at all my notes and you know, they took blood and they were saying, well, there's nothing wrong with you. You know, the infection's gone and that was their benchmark for me being able to function. That, you know, on paper, I looked healthy, I can tell you in reality I could not function. And it was really when my mom took me to one of those, um I was very lucky. She took me to a beautiful spot in Geneva um to rest for a few days.
And it was there that the spa didn't help me. You know, it was very nice to, you know, sit by the lake with with with a blanket over me. But you know, it was there that I had one of those life changing moments and that was bumping into to one of the world's leading professors in the field of longevity and preventative disease. A guy called dr paul Clayton who happened to be there on the conference and you know I was chatting to him about my story and he said well you know I've got no time for the supplement market at all, It's a load of you know, whatever nothing really works, it doesn't there's no legislation in place that means it has to work its full of factory floor scrape. I mean it was just going on a long um and I was just thinking about my huge cupboard of supplements at home that was perhaps not not not doing what it needed to. Um and he explained there was a hidden category of nutrition, a hidden category of supplementation that actually was proven to work, but it was not available to consumers because it didn't fit in with the price structure with the commercial structure of the supplement market.
And he I don't know whether he just wanted to get rid of me or took pity on me, but he said look I'll send you some ingredients to the post and I know that you will get better. And I came back and every day I was waiting for these supplements to arrive and they didn't and after a couple of weeks they arrived I took them and literally three or four weeks later I was back at work, I just felt myself again um and that was really the lightbulb moment where I realized that if if I was suffering like this there are millions of other people that would be suffering too whereby the medical world wasn't able to help them because the pharmaceutical model is very much geared towards taking away a symptom once you get ill it doesn't deal with preventative health at all and it doesn't deal with kind of you know um tonics that help you get better, help you feel better. And that was the moment where I asked for Clayton if he would consider coming in with me and we launch this medical grade supplement together.
Um and after a lot of persuasion, he he said yes, he he he was he was explaining it would be a very, very difficult road to bring this supplement to market and he was totally right, but you know, we we we did it and and four years later we've got you know a successful global business. So what year are we talking about that you is that 2017 because I think you launched in 2018, right? We launched in 2018 in February 2018. But this was a conversation that I had with him a few years before, I mean it took a year just to find a factory that would deal with this set of ingredients, you know that in itself was was a huge challenge because you know there are thousands of supplement factories and they're all very good, however you can only work with the ingredients that they already work with which are the cheap organic and generic ingredients that, you know, their bulk buy in from mainly china and you know, they're not proven to do anything, but that's where the markup is.
So, you know, for instance, tumeric in an organic tumeric in a factory is a like a pound a kilo. The medical grade tumeric that we use in lima, which is hydro Kirk is nearly £300 a kilo. So you see that it doesn't fit in with the commercial structure of the supplement market and it's not really beneficial for supplement factories. The deal with this set of ingredients because you can't make the same mark up that you can from using cheap generic ingredients. But fundamentally, you know, the the irony is that tumeric is actually placebo, you know, the tumeric market's worth hundreds of billions of dollars, but actually, organic tumeric as a placebo, you'll never get an active level into your plasma to have an anti inflammatory effect that your body can't absorb it. And then you get these huge, you know, you get these other water soluble to mix the patented water soluble tumeric and what they fail to do, you know what consumers don't realize about those is that the majority of the ingredient is actually made up of the carrier system that makes it water soluble, so at least negligible amounts for the actual humanoids.
So there's only one extract in the market that actually is going to be effective and that's the one that we use in lima because only 10% of the ingredient is accounted for by the carrier system and therefore you leave 90% of the ingredients to feature the humanoids which are the which is what's going to have an anti inflammatory effect. So there's huge loads of nuances in the industry that the consumer doesn't know because fundamentally it's a very political space and it's crazy that the supplement market does not have robust legislation to really protect the consumer and to ensure that the consumer has a beneficial effect by taking them bloody hell, it's tough out there with the supplement market, my goodness. And it's so you know, as you're explaining these things, these are words I've never heard of, I obviously didn't know this, it's it's really it's crazy, I'm interested to know how did you actually get dr paul Clayton to like say yes and be excited about building a supplement brand that was so hard to do, I guess, you know, he he's an academic and you know, he's got a brilliant mind, he's a genius, but he just was he's very much not anybody who is commercially driven.
So you know the enticement of of launching a brand just did not like his fire, but it was really the excitement of what we were doing, I guess that you know, we would be the first brand in the world to actually move the supplement industry on and you know, I spent months trying to convince them that, you know, you're you're in this fight, you know, against the supplement market, you can only start to change it if you're involved in something that actually is going to change the category. And by launching lima, that's exactly what we've done, wow goodness, it sounds like this kind of business and this kind of business model obviously requires a lot of upfront capital, lot of working capital, even just to get to the point of, you know, R and D and then through to minimum orders and production, packaging etcetera, it's a high price point, it's a very luxury brand.
I am imagine all touchpoints are extremely beautiful and you know, nice to look at, nice to touch what's the money piece of the story and how are you approaching funding in the beginning, especially as someone who, you know, you said you had no idea about launching a business, you never had that in your kind of vision to being like, all right, well what do we do now, how do we get this brand to life? So this was another big challenge, I have to be honest, it wasn't a small amount of money that we needed to launch lima, I went out to a load of investment companies and it was very quickly, you know, a unanimous no from every one of them. Um they did not have any confidence that the consumer would want to spend 100 and £50 a month, as opposed to say like £20 a month on a on a supplement that worked. Um, and, you know, I think it's very, it is very difficult when you're trying to start a business not to make spontaneous decisions when it comes to funding, you know, although every business needs money to get going, where you take that money from in the first instance is really important because it can have huge implications later down the line.
You know, I was adamant that it wouldn't be, we wouldn't take money from crowdfunding and that, you know, you've always got that wealthy relation, you really tempted to call that maybe haven't spoken to for a long time. And, you know, lots of people do choose friends and family to raise the initial funds, but, you know, I'm very aware that that comes with a really big moral obligation, which can then be really challenging if things don't go well, you know, investing at an emotional level, might not be the right thing moving forward. So my, you know, myself and my husband, we took the huge risk and, you know, we were, it was not responsible of us at all, but we put everything on the line, we? Re mortgaged everything and we funded the business ourselves and that could have been the daft ist thing we ever did, but, you know, it paid off.
Are you able to share? How much, how much did you have to put in? I can't even, I can't share but it wasn't a small amount of money, it really wasn't. But you know I think because it was everything that we had that was on the line, you know we did our homework, you know everybody starts with the intention that you're going to succeed, it will succeed. But you know I think you've got to just really be honest about your chances of success and never answer the questions that you know, always only answer the difficult questions. Can you answer the difficult questions? Forget every single positive associated with that business and only focus on the negatives, which is what we did, which is what's an example of that. Like what's a difficult question. Well you know why would somebody spend 100 and £50 a month on a supplement that was going to work? You know, they never have done before.
It's a totally new proposition. How are you going to change a global market that has existed at a certain price point for decades? You know with something that's different I think, you know, knowing what customer, we were going to get our route to market, how we were going to become profitable, How we were going to secure our 1st 1000 customers. You know these all had to be watertight and we felt that they were watertight and and that's why we did it. I was always fascinated by what jo Malone did. Where she a commodity that there was a candle that everybody got from the supermarket. She repackaged it and and charge a different price point made it into a luxury lifestyle statement from the home. And by the same token I felt that there was a huge opportunity in the world of supplements to do that. Um you know a great idea is not good enough. If you can't sell it it's pointless.
So um all these and then you know after we launched and we sold out within two weeks. So you know we we knew that you know we were onto a winner. The irony was all those investment companies that turned me down in the first place then came back and went well see you've launched now you know we can we invest in it. And it was like no because if you doubted me once something will go wrong down the line and you will doubt me again. So actually when we got our first round of investment from a V. C. T. It was a V. C. T. That we had never spoken to in the past. So we're all about a fresh page when you say V. C. T. What is that? I haven't heard the t venture capital Trust Trust got it. Okay. Right. New for me haven't heard that one. If you're a small business owner and you manage your own fulfillment. You've probably heard of the Dymo label printer.
It's the gold star for e commerce store owners and they've just released their label writer five series with new software that's easy to install and use giving you more control over your printing than ever before. This printer will streamline your operations and print labels in precise quantities with ease and faster than ever. And with the new software you can keep track of the size, type and number of remaining at a glance, reducing misprints and alerting you when it's time to change the label roll. You'll also be able to save money with no need for expensive ink or toner, which also means less waste as well as being made from sustainable materials. This is Deimos most impressive label writer model yet and we can't wait to hear about the impact it can have on your business. You can pick one up from your local office supply store or learn more at Dymo online dot com dot au. I'd love to circle back to you were just saying a moment ago that you needed to get your marketing plan to get your 1st 1000 customers obviously then you sell out within two weeks and I think I read you had a wait list of about 5000 people even before launching.
I'd love to kind of deep dive into what you were doing to build that waitlist what was the blueprint of getting to your 1st 1000 customers. So getting to the 1st 1000 customers, my background was pr so that was my career as a journalist first and I spent a good few years NPR so I made it all very pr focus before we launched. We got one celebrity to post something on their social channels. And when you look at lima in the copper hammered copper vessel, you don't instantly know what it was. And we had like a solid copper members card. It all looked very kind of innocuous and it's amazing once one person post something and it looks a bit different that you start to get interest from other people and you know people didn't really know what lima was. We had one celebrity that contacted us asking if they could join our concierge.
Um you know, nobody really knew what it was. So and we kept it quite vague, so in the first instance it was really kind of we created that fomo um whereby people wanted to know what we were launching and we got some two really, really big pr hits and it kind of took off from there and from the first two big pr heads, we got our 1st 1000 customers, wow, that's so crazy because pr can go kind of two ways, it can either totally hit and totally work or just, I've heard so many times on the show, it does nothing. Yeah, I guess there must be a secret formula there. Well there is a formula and it was only because I was in pr that I knew what the formula was. You know, you've got to I think because I was a journalist before I went into pr I knew what the newspaper would want.
I always gave them the full story. So it needs to have every single piece of the pie, it's got to have something new, had celebrity, it had case study. You know, it kind of had every single element. If you just have like product pr whereby it's just a picture on a page of the product, then nobody really knows much about it when it's not a commodity. So obviously if it's something like a lipstick or a bag or a jacket, then all you really need to do is see the picture of that commodity when something's not the commodity. So with something like lima where you're buying into a health benefit that you can't see on the page, can't see what eight hour sleep feels like looks like on the page, you can't see what increased focus looks like on the page. You can't you can't see increased immunity. All these things have to be explained through trusted case studies through a trusted media outlet.
So it's not just the case of just getting the product on the page, it's got to tell the whole story. Yeah, that's so true now that I think about when you, when you sum it up like that, I'm like, oh yeah, that does make a lot of sense to do it that way. That is correct. So in that first year you have the two, you know, first hits of PR goes really well, it gets the ball rolling. What happens next? What does that next year in business look like from, you know, to keep the momentum going? Well, you know, I guess we launched exclusively on our website. So at lima dot life and the next stage after initially launched, we had all these people contact us from all over the world, were only launching in the UK to start off with. So the next piece in the puzzle was to get international shipping. So, so we quickly scaled our business in a matter of weeks to launch global shipping from our website and that takes you to a global audience.
The next stage was to agree on what retailers were going to work with. We were only ever going to work with a few global halo retailers because we launched primarily as a dtc business. And that business model still stands today. So with a few halo retailers globally, such as Net Support Harrods, Harvey Nichols, but you know, the reality is that we don't make a huge markup on supplement and the margins don't really work for us wholesale. So, um we knew that the halo accounts that we got had to really be the ultimate ones and that's why we went with Netta Porta for our first global partner and that really takes you to a different audience and you know, it's quite a big step going to into retail because you know, you very much protected your brand on your website, it's like, it's like having a baby, you know, you just want to spend time with that baby for the first few weeks, first few months, and then you kind of got to cast an open and they go to school by the same token, you know, you have to kind of go to retailers and work with retailers and trust them with your product.
So we went with Netta Porta first and then we went in the UK with harvey Nichols and in the U S went with Bergdorf Goodman and Saks and we then got a proper first round of funding from Pembroke Vct in the december. So from the february, launching in the february to the december, we kind of went on a huge lifetime journey that actually was only a few months from launching to getting our funding in. Um and then you get then you've got all new set of challenges and that, you know, you got to recruit and you know, move from a kitchen table, which is, you know, the kitchen table that I'm on now into into an office and start scaling up and with that comes a different set of challenges. Yeah, absolutely, and since then you've obviously started to launch a number of different products, including your kind of most recent product, the lima laser, The high price point laser.
I'd love to get into again the marketing of that how you kind of you know approached something that required FDA approvals and medical grade technology and all these other challenges that you must have been facing. Yeah I think you know the leaner supplement disrupted the supplement sector with the category of supplementation that worked and by the same token we knew that our next product had to be another category, disrupting Moment. And you know we work with over 20 scientists now globally who are all coming back with the latest and greatest scientific developments in different fields and everything was really exciting. But nothing felt like really spine tingling Lee incredible that spine tingly incredible. You can tell that. Yeah. English wasn't one of my strong points is No, I love it.
Um Sorry go on. Yeah. Doctor I was in Germany and he was looking at a 62 year old man's needs that had been treated with low level laser therapy to rebuild cartilage in one of his knees. And there's this huge team of doctors that we're looking at all, all the different parameters, all the different benefits. And He just had like a real lightbulb moment in that he thought well forget what's going on inside the knee, the skin on the knee that had been treated looked about 20 years younger than the skin on his other knee. And he then realized that the at home cosmetic light device industry was heavily based around led and led only came after low level laser therapy was only developed because low level laser therapy was not allowed to be used at home because obviously laser is a potentially dangerous light source. You can't start bringing a powerful laser into the home. It was not legal which is why the Led market boomed because it was a cheap technology and it was safe to use at home.
And he realized that actually if we could engineer this technology into an equally powerful laser that was being used in the hospital but made it safe to use at home then this technology was well is 100 times more powerful than LED. It would totally change the face of the at home cosmetic market. So the next challenge was making it you know, engineering this device into a little portable laser that you could use at home which took some time and then getting FDA approval took just as long just as long a time. Because you know just the irony is actually the FDA for supplements. You know you can be FDA approved for your supplement by literally just submitting the supplement label to the FDA. And if they don't get back to you in 21 days it means it's FDA approved.
So there's very little you need to do to get a supplement approved by the FDA. However for at home cosmetic devices, it is totally another game. You know, they are so hot to trot on safety on you know it's like the tests that you need to do for the FDA on another level to any test that you need to do for the rest of world like what what do you have to do? So one of the tests that, I mean it's all around safety and obviously working with a 500 million watt near infrared laser where the previous legal limits at home lasers was between five and 20 mila Watts, wow, this is this is like a whole new category and that's why the lima laser is the first FDA cleared clinic grade laser to be approved for use at home. So it really is a whole new category. Um one of the tests we had to do was if you put the lima laser in a microwave at what temperature did the battery blow up?
I mean like you have to cover, you have to know at what point does it not work if you run it over. I mean like I'm telling you the lima laser will not work. If you run it over, you probably you could kill yourself if you run yourself, you know if you get run over, it's not been, it's not been designed to run over anything. Um but no, it was a very very difficult process but you know, it was just the world's most incredible day when we actually got the approval through because it is such a revolutionary piece of technology. It is the only laser that you can use at home that does not damage any cell in the process of renewal. It works off a totally different premise to every other technology that's out there and that's why it's the first laser that can be used on all skin types and tones, which is, you know, which is a first for inclusive beauty goodness.
It sounds amazing. I'm interested to know about the marketing strategy for this and if you followed the same kind of approach kind of leading with Pr or if you, you know, went down the route of more specific celebrities or influencer marketing or paid advertising or what the kind of approach was to get the word outside of your existing customer base, I think, you know, if you look at marketing historically, it was relatively simple, you know, you advertise, people see it and then they buy it. But now marketing is much more complicated. It's really awareness, that's the key to have success long term. If nobody knows about your brand, they won't know about your products and I guess unfortunately as good as all the digital channels are to access customers, it's a really, really crowded space because it all goes through the same social channels who are targeting the same audience. So you kind of like a tiny tiny dot in a massive world of big money chasing the same customer.
And so this is why you need to do something different. When we launched lima with the supplement, we didn't have a database, we were unknown and we got our 1st 1000 customers through PR PR is still a very important piece in lima's marketing mix today, but you know, when we launched a laser, we obviously had a database of supplement customers who were spending 1000 £800 a year on the supplement. So we, we had a robust database of customers who will be interested in the laser, but what kind of really works for us is a blend of different activity that targets customers on the different channels. So not it's not one thing that works on its own, it's like a really complex collection of balanced activities where you understand the customer's needs and the purchasing processes and for that you need a complex method of communication with the different customers. So it's really by kind of only understanding what doesn't work and making those mistakes will help you come up with what works, you know, ultimately, do you have an example of what didn't work for you or something that you tried?
That was a fail? Yeah, so it's what I go back to before seeing the beautiful copper vessel on its own with the beautiful copper pill, people assume that you're just paying all the money for the beautiful copper vessel, when in reality you're actually paying for the ingredients that go inside the pill, you know, you get a lot of bang for your buck with copper, it's not gold, it's copper, but it looks, it looks beautiful, but you're seriously not paying for the copper vessel, you're paying for the ingredients that go inside the capsule. You know, if you have to buy the ingredients in lima separately from a reputable retailer, you pay a hell of a lot more than you would buy bang lima. And by the same token, when you look at the lima laser, it just looks like a black torch, can't see the huge, hugely powerful feat of engineering that's gone inside that to bring a clinic grade laser into the home.
So it's really about telling a story for us, It's about telling case studies, it's about engaging with audiences whereby they have got an issue that you can resolve. So it could be um, people that can't sleep. So you're targeting people that can't sleep. A known audience of people that can't sleep with a solution that will give you eight hours sleep targeting stressed people with a proven solution that will bring down your quarters or levels. So it's about telling multiple different stories to an audience that it would resonate with. It's not about one, It's not about just one element of that. You've really got to give the full 360 tail, you've got to have the beginning the middle and the end the hooks, that's what's going to resonate with people I saw when I was looking through your instagram, you've partnered with people like Hailey Bieber and Chiara ferragni, which is obviously, you know, huge celebrities when you for example, work with someone like Chiara ferragni who's using your product in a video, Are you approaching them to build a paid partnership or are you sending it as a gift or have they discovered it through another means?
Through your marketing? No, we're not officially working with any of these people. These are just people that have got a laser, you know, Hailey Bieber was introduced to the laser through a facial with Joanna Czech Joanna check with using the laser. So lima is a very, very organic brand. You know, it creates authentic conversations that spread, it's not, we don't pay these people to work with us. It's not, that's not the strategy that we, that we have, wow, that is just amazing. And so for someone like Kiara, do you know how she came across the product? Just through a friend of hers? Gosh, isn't that the dream? Yeah, and I guess that speaks for itself, It does, you know, if you, if you see somebody, I know I've done it, you know, I do myself, you know, if you see somebody and they look great, you know, oh my God, you know, you're looking looking amazing if you had any work done, you know, and if somebody says no, but I've just been using the lima laser and you can actually see a visible difference, then, you know, friends want to help friends and likewise, if you can't sleep and your friend can't sleep or your friend is suffering from the menopause or you know, any, any form of suffering and you find something that helps you want to share it with your friend, you know, you want her to feel great too.
So it really does go organically viral within communities. What advice can you leave us for founders who are kind of wanting to launch products in that high ticket space? Well, the irony is that, you know, lima is more expensive than other brands, but it actually offers great value. You know, if you went to the doctor and you couldn't sleep and you ask for a sleeping tablet and said, well I can't, I can't give you a sleeping tablet, but I can give you this patch and you put it on your skin and it will give you eight hours sleep every night and it costs £5 a day to rent that patch, You would rent that patch for £5 a day and lima cost £5 a day. You know, we what we, it was always something that I was very committed to, that I wanted lima to be affordable for The majority of people and you know, the majority of people in the UK and the us, they've got £5 a day that they might spend on a coffee on buying lunch that they could make at home.
You know, it was don't buy that expensive bottle of wine in the restaurant, don't buy that jumper that you don't really need. Um you know, sleep, stress, focus, performance, energy, these are all fundamentals to your life. You know, It's something that you deserve, you deserve to invest in yourself and by the same token, the laser, yes, it is £2,000. However, how many people get Botox, spend £500 every three months on Botox. You know, if you had to make a choice, would you prefer to invest your money in something that you could use every day at home Or spend £500 every three months on boat docks. You know, if you can do both. But you know, there are always ways that you can trade off as to whether you can make the investment to purchase the two products that we have in Lima. Absolutely. And so I guess for anyone listening who is in that space of higher ticket, it's around really showing the value and showing why someone would purchase that over potentially something else.
The storytelling. Yeah. And also, you know, it's not as I say, it's not that we're making a huge markup that our products don't work on a traditional wholesale model. You know, these are really expensive products for us to produce and you know, even as products have all gone up over the past few years, 20% whatever I can assure you the what we've done is try and make sure that our products do not go up in value at all and we've managed to retain the price that we did when we launched four years ago and that's literally by having you know more people that are buying the products so we've managed to negotiate better terms with our suppliers. So you know that's kind of our commitment I guess to our customers. That's amazing wow. Really impressive.
So question number one is, what's your, why? Why are you doing what you're doing every single day to help the millions of people who don't feel good or don't feel as though they look their best to help people look and feel their best. Gosh, it's amazing. You can help. Absolutely. Question number two is what has been your favorite marketing moment so far? Um, I guess winning the fast company's most innovative award for the lima laser. Um that was complete spine tingling moment. That was a good one, congratulations by the way, Question # three, What is your go to business resource? If you were to pick a book or a podcast or a newsletter? I guess I would, I probably wouldn't pick any of those and I'd have to say the team at lima.
Everyone has got incredible insight has come from different industries, all different industries. You know, it's not necessarily from helpful beauty. I think applying those learnings to a different industry is where you get the magic. I love that question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM or PM rituals and habits that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated. De lima supplement. I tell you, I was, I told you before I just had a baby a few weeks ago when you're pregnant. You can't take lima because you can't take anything, you know, nothing's been really tested on pregnant women. So I had to stop taking lima for nine months and I got to when I stopped taking it two weeks in after stopping taking it. I was thinking yeah I feel pretty good. Maybe you know I don't know what it was doing. You know I was thinking maybe I don't need it anymore anyway like four weeks later I couldn't sleep.
You know everything went back to what I was before I started taking lima. So I really appreciated having a baby and started taking them again and it genuinely gets me through the day goodness can't wait to try it. Question number five is what's been your worst money mistake in the business? Oh God this is something that I genuinely did when we moved into our new head office last september I bought the world's most ridiculously priced chair for um just as you walked in and it really was the world's biggest waste of money. And when it arrived I realized it was a doll's chair that I bought. It arrived in this little box. It was I just looked at the picture, I looked at the measurements and it was it was actually a doll's chair that I bought.
So I sent it back. How Much was it? It was £6,000. What is so funny! Oh my God at least you're able to return it. My goodness! No. Well I think I I think in the end I just annoyed the guy so much that he took it back because I want to hear from this woman again. Ever. Oh my gosh I feel like this, this question that answer blends with my, my final question, which is, but maybe you have some more is what's just a crazy story that you can share? Good, bad or otherwise in your entrepreneurial journey so far? Well, I think I've really exposed myself the last question, so I'll just say something good for those. I guess seeing waking up and seeing kim Kardashian using the laser. Oh, Great one. When did that happen a few weeks ago?
Oh my gosh, Holy moly, that's crazy. I watched an interview with her recently where she was saying, you know, she doesn't get fillers and she doesn't get any, have any work. And she was saying, you know, I invest in good quality products. Like I spend a lot on my skin care, but I don't have like, I don't know what term is, but like work done on my face, I just invest in the best interesting. So yeah, I think I will never buy another chair ever again. Oh my gosh, well, thank you so much lucy for coming on the show and telling us all about lima, it sounds absolutely amazing. Such a crazy product for health and wellness and sleep. My goodness, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a real, real pleasure. Really enjoyed it.
