Intentional About Subscriptions: From 0 to >100k Subscribers With Smartrr

Introduction

We last spoke with Ryan Babenzien, Founder and CEO of Jolie, two years ago just as Jolie was beginning its exponential growth. At the time, Jolie’s filtered shower head was gaining serious traction, attention and popularity and the brand had amassed just over 3,500 subscribers. Today, Jolie has over 100,000 active subscribers with no signs of slowing. We caught up with Ryan to see how he’s managed this growth.

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Solving a big problem

You don’t disrupt a multi-hundred billion dollar beauty industry in just a few short years through a great product alone. You do it through a unique perspective on the market, an intentional strategy to solve a big problem, and relentless execution. Jolie checks all three boxes.

“Jolie exists to solve an incredibly large problem for the consumer–the water we use on a daily basis isn’t clean. Three years in, the scale of our business has certainly changed, but this philosophy hasn’t. Being incredibly thoughtful at the outset about how we approach this problem has been our guide to high level execution every step of the way.” - Ryan Babenzien, Founder and CEO of Jolie

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Intentional About Every Aspect of the Business

So where exactly does this thoughtfulness and intentionality show up in Jolie's execution? The short answer–everywhere.

‍Intentional with time and resources

Not only has Jolie reached their level of scale in such a short amount of time, but even more impressive, they’ve done it with only three full time employees. 

“One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned running Jolie is when to say ‘no’. We regularly have really exciting opportunities or impressive new tech cross our plate. Each time this happens, we really ask ourselves if it helps us execute on what is most important to the business right now. If the answer isn’t 100% yes, we pass.” - Ryan

Limiting distractions and applying a “common sense filter”, as Ryan puts it, to each decision has been critical to Jolie’s rapid ascent.

Intentional about subscriptions

A longtime industry veteran, no one is more aware of the harsh financial realities of ecommerce and direct-to-consumer (DTC) businesses than Ryan. Rather than take a passive approach to this, he knew going in the business had to be built around subscriptions.

“If the business is working well, that means subscriptions are working well. From the start, we wanted to build a business that was healthy financially. There is no better way to do this than through a healthy subscription program with low churn that keeps bringing in recurring revenue.” - Ryan

The problem–when you hear ‘shower head’, you probably don’t immediately associate that with ‘subscription product’. The forethought to turn their shower head into a subscription via replaceable filters unlocked this path.

‍“Hardware and subscriptions. It's not new, but the power of a business that uses a piece of hardware with a sticky recurring revenue component is magical when it works. That’s what we’ve managed to achieve here at Jolie.” - Ryan

Intentional about their subscription platform

Given their approach to their business, it’s only natural that Jolie was equally intentional and thoughtful when picking the right partner to power their subscription program.

At the outset, Ryan knew there were key, non-negotiable criteria the platform they chose to partner with would have to satisfy:

• It would have to support their unique use case, the ability to sell hardware along with a subscription refill. An obvious requirement, but the reality was (and still) that only a few platforms were flexible enough to support their vision.
• The platform would have to scale with them, not hold them back. Having a clear vision for where the company was heading, they knew they needed a platform that could handle their volume with ease.
• The platform would have to power subscriber experiences that were able to meet the standards Jolie’s customers would expect. Jolie obsessed over every customer touchpoint, from unique OOH advertising to the unboxing experience. The online subscriber experience had to match that level of experience.
• They needed an actual partner for their growth journey. As a lean team, they needed a platform with real people behind it that were there to support them when needed.

Enter Smartrr. Smartrr’s flexibility, approach to the subscriber experience and hands-on support made it the clear choice for Jolie, and they haven’t looked back.

“Smartrr has been an incredible partner to Jolie. They’ve powered our subscriptions, such a core part of our business from the beginning and have supported our growth to over 100,000 subscribers. To have that consistency and faith in a partner, we know they’re right to power the next level of growth as well.” -Ryan

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How Jolie uses Smartrr

Jolie leverages Smartrr's Subscription Journeys to customize their subscription program. Essentially, this is a flow that allows Jolie to pair a physical product (their filtered shower head) with a refill subscription (their replacement filters). As seen below, Jolie defaults to the subscription option and lays out exactly what a shopper is purchasing when they opt-in.

‍“Hardware and subscriptions. It's not new, but the power of a business that uses a piece of hardware with a sticky recurring revenue component is magical when it works. The tricky part was finding a provider who could bring this to life the exact way we wanted. Smartrr stepped up in this area." -Ryan

In addition to their custom Subscription Journey, Jolie leverages Smartrr's referral capability, making it seamless for customers to refer friends and families to Jolie straight from their customer portal.

The Results

The subscription side of the business is working even better than expected. The stickiness of their product and churn have helped propel the company forward. In just three short years, Jolie has amassed over 100,000 active subscribers, churns less than 1% of subscribers each month and has over $10,000,000 in active subscription revenue.

‍“Hardware and subscriptions. It's not new, but the power of a business that uses a piece of hardware with a sticky recurring revenue component is magical when it works. We churn less than 1% of subscribers on a monthly basis. Some of our cohorts are still at 99% retention after five months. Subscriptions are working better than we possibly could have imagined when we set out.” - Ryan

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What's Next for Jolie?

When you ask Ryan, the answer is short–keep growing profitably. Jolie’s unique approach to paid and out-of-home advertising mixed with an emerging retail footprint have kept them profitable on a first purchase basis, a dynamic Ryan is focused on keeping even as they scale. And where will growth come from? Well, they’ve set themselves up in a space where they won’t be limited by options.

“The craziest part is that we’ve just scratched the surface on the opportunity available to us. There are hundreds of millions of shower heads in the US. We still have to tackle the water that comes out of your sink and your bathtub. It’s hard to even put a number on where we could get to. Now it’s just about continued focus on the problem we solve and execution.” Ryan

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