Carolyn Crewe is the CEO and Co-Founder of Duckish Natural Skin Care, a concentrated, natural bath, body, and baby care brand that does less with more. Based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Carolyn has navigated both the e-commerce and brick-and-mortar business landscape in the past few years to both grow the Duckish brand, and in response to growing burnout rates amongst women, introduce Boom Box, a premium wellness subscription box for tired-ass women. What started as a part-time business has grown into a full-time e-commerce brand with products on the shelves of over 200 stores, including Whole Foods Ontario and Sobeys stores across Atlantic Canada, in the last six years. From deciding how to sell online, building an Amazon store, or subscription box business, Carolyn has a wealth of experience to share.

Can you tell our readers about your background?

I attended Mount Allison University, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), Halifax, and Concordia University and graduated with a BSc, BFA, and MBA respectively. I am originally from Newfoundland, Canada, and have lived in different places over the years.

What inspired you to start your business?

The idea stemmed from my own skin troubles. It snowballed from there. Imagine you have eczema that wouldn’t go away and the Doctor prescribes Hydrocortisone as the answer, which to me is a band-aid at best. It thins your skin and isn’t derived from great ingredients as well. I was looking for a product that was concentrated. I looked for lotions. I wanted something that didn't feel like I constantly needed to re-apply for me to get relief. It kick-started my research into what goes into creams and lotions. I also wanted to know what the active ingredients were, to know what is useful versus what is there for filler. It snowballed into me taking that knowledge and buying ingredients and tinkering with them in my kitchen. It then snowballed into me making a batch of this and that. And because you have a batch, you cant use it all up so you give it to your friends. I started giving them to my friends. I had a batch of different things I thought were useful for my skin and some others that were useful for toddler skin.

My sister had a baby at the time and I didn’t like what was in her diaper cream. That sent me down a weird diaper cream wormhole. I am kind of nerdy so I found that interesting. We ended up creating a diaper cream for babies as a result. My own child also had eczema at some point. They prescribed Hydrocortisone and I didn’t want to give my baby that. All of those things have dovetailed into me creating and researching, creating products, giving people, they ask for more and it has grown since then.

Duckish started a year before I had a baby. Those are my 2 babies and they have been brought up at the same time. It started part-time. Now, it has grown and is now a full-time thing. It has now spun into BoomBox – a curated wellness subscription box for tired-ass women.

Where is your business based?

Halifax, Canada

How did you start your business?

We always knew it was going to be an online business because an online business as a side hustle just makes sense. And that was the case after looking at the landscape about 6 years ago. We had a product line and created an e-commerce store. We told our friends about it. We put a couple of posts on Facebook because it was more relevant at the time. Instagram was there but it wasn't like what it is today. There was no TikTok. It was basically a lot of word of mouth. I knew coincidentally a couple of people in Halifax who had shops. We told them “hey we have this great lip balm. Oh, we have this really this unique hand lotion”. People are always looking for these cute unique things to put at the cash. We got into a couple of stores. It grew by word of mouth and also through our own network. It has grown largely in that way.

What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?

That is still a question I am not sure of, to be honest. We’ve tried a lot of different things. It depends on the kind of product you sell. Our rock star products are our mini sticks. People wonder “is this a mini deodorant, is it a mini lotion? What is this?” When you have a product that is a little “mind-bending” in a way and people haven't seen it before, there is an education gap that needs to be jumped over. Getting our products into subscription boxes has been really useful because we get paid to give people our samples. We made sure we chose subscription boxes that are about healthy lifestyles, clean products etc. We are getting paid to put samples into the hands of perfect customers. Once people try it, they like it.

Boombox is still tricky because it's new. Public Relations (PR) is definitely working for that, in terms of awareness and getting in front of eyeballs. It has been great for telling the story, especially for men. Men can know how their wives and girlfriends are struggling. They are more likely to pull the trigger on that kind of purchase, compared to the tired-ass woman, whose first instinct is often to put everybody else first. She thinks “I can't spend a hundred dollars on myself because that could buy toys, snacks, or whatever else for the kids.”

Also, I think getting our products  into the hands of the smaller kind of micro-influencers who have a little following that really trusts their recommendations is key. I think that is going to be something that'll be interesting, as well as the PR push.

What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?

Oh my God, everything! Nothing has been easy. For example, our lotion sticks. Even though they're our best selling product, it does require your brain to make a little jump to think “this little thing is lotion.” Because people are used to seeing lotion in a big bottle that’s liquid and that you pump or squeeze out. That education gap is a huge deal. And we're still constantly working on trying to educate people to realize that the little lotion stick equals a typical big lotion bottle, with the same amount of lotion power, if you will. (Ours has less water, hence the size. And it’s good for the earth too!) So education, when you make products that people are not used to – is a huge hurdle to overcome. 

It may be the best thing they've ever tried, but if they don't know what it is, the idea of asking them to pay money, to try it,  especially online, that’s a big, big obstacle. So yeah, when you have innovative products, the education required is a huge deal.

Also, cashflow is a constant challenge. Supply chain issues have been a freaking nightmare as well. For example, we ordered some boxes at the end of August and I got them in January. We had been working on PR. We had been working on marketing. We had a marketing plan to push this new line of water-free, concentrated eco-friendly shower care products. We had gift sets where every gift had at least one bar. We had the packaging for the gift sets, but we had no packages to put the bars we had produced in, all because of supply chain challenges. So we had to go to another company to pay more to get a small batch in order  to get us through the holidays. So supply chain has been a constant battle. 

Supply versus demand has been a challenge too. Even hiring as well. If you hire the wrong person, it can really make your life hard as a business owner. So hiring smartly, being smart in who you hire, when you hire and what you're hiring for is also key.

How do you stay focused?

I am not very good at that. The past few months have been incredibly challenging. So on a day-to-day basis, I have my plan. It could be like a sticky note. It could be my little list to work with. It could also be on my phone. It could be in my calendar. They include the critical things that I need to get done each day.

My schedule gets blown up constantly by things that you don't see coming. For example, equipment breaks down and then you have to come up with a plan B or someone's sick on this day, but all kinds of things were supposed to happen. So all of the things that I had planned to do, I can't do now because I have to do this other thing. So it's incredibly hard.

I find lists helpful. And I like to do it in a way that I know “these are the priority stuff. These are nice to get done. And then these are the things that should get done at some point.” But it's okay if I kick the can down the road a little bit further.

How do you differentiate your business from the competition?

I would say there are a lot of bath and body brands out there that focus on clean ingredients. So it's a big deal to demonstrate how you are unique and different. So for us, the fact that pretty much all of our formulas are concentrated and water-free would be a huge way that we differentiate ourselves from the competitors.

So you are getting a more concentrated product, which means you're going to have to use less to get the same results. You're getting more bang for your buck because you're not paying for a watered down product. There's also a sustainability angle in that if I can put the same amount of lotion power in a small bottle versus what it would normally take for larger lotion bottles,  that’s one sustainability angle there. Also, it takes a lot of energy to transport a heavy liquid lotion versus our small concentrated lotion sticks that weigh less than 20 grams.

What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business? 

I would say the combination of subscription box samples and word of mouth have been the two key things. If I had to pick one, I would probably go with the subscription boxes because that's something that you have more active control over versus word of mouth. You hear that people tell their friends about your product, but you don't really have any control over that.

What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?

Talk to your customer.

Right now, you have an idea, but you are having a conversation in your head about what you think people want. And you think you might know what people want because you think it's a good idea. But unless you actually talk to other humans, you don't know. You'll be totally surprised to see that it’s either they give you insights like “Oh this idea is good, but I'm not willing to pay for it, because the problem that it solves is not annoying enough that I'm willing to pay for a solution” or they're going to give you some other light bulb, crazy insights on how you can make your product better.

So if you can talk to actual people, that's gold…gold, gold, gold! You have to talk to humans to actually learn what it is they're struggling with.

It's also going to give you language that is really useful in any advertisement you do. So one thing that came up from doing trade shows early on is what we learnt about our little lotion sticks. Ladies would constantly come up to our table and be like “oh my God, this is the perfect lotion for my purse.” And I thought “Okay, cool.” Now, I have a running list in my phone or on my computer of the things people say when they're holding, touching, smelling a product. That information continues to inform our product design.

What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?

CapCut for video editing. If I can edit a video using this app, any human on the planet can do it because I am very impatient. If I can't figure it out immediately, I'm done! My favourite book is “Jobs to be done” by Anthony W. Ulwick.

What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?

I have a couple of different groups that I'll call entrepreneurship support groups. So we meet occasionally with the same group every time. They all own businesses, have small children and are all going through the same things that I go through. There's a format that we follow every time and you're meant to reflect on your business and you share with people what you want to share. And if you need help, you can ask the group for help in terms of networking, funding opportunities and so on.

And then I have another one that's more structured called EO which is the Entrepreneurs Organization, which is like a big thing, like an actual entity.

How do you balance work and life?

That's adorable and hilarious. I have a five-year-old so basically, I try to keep the workday as the workday. Officially my workday ends at five o'clock. And then I go home and do the mom stuff. And then there are some days where there are things that I just didn't get to in the day.

So I work for a couple more hours maybe in the evening. Usually, I try to shut everything down by 8:00 PM because my brain is melting. And I really try to get as much out of each day in those hours. So weekends are usually mostly off-limits. There might be an hour if my kid is outside playing with my husband, for example, then I might take that hour to catch up on a couple of things. Like stealing moments here and there. But balance? No, no. I don't have time because I have these other things that I either didn't get done or need to get a jump on.

So since I started the Boombox, it has been a big reminder to take some time for self-care. I'm terrible at it but I am working on it.

What’s your favorite way to decompress?

I take walks. So that’s my way of decompressing by myself with no one talking to me which is a weird way to treat yourself, I guess.

What do you have planned for the next six months?

That's an excellent question. So we'd like to grow Boombox - for Tired Ass Women, obviously because I keep talking to people and we're starting to get more reviews on our website from people and more survey results. From the people that received the first Boombox, the consensus is that people really seem to enjoy it, both the products and the experience.

I think that's really fun. So I'd like to grow the BoomBox. We also have a couple of export opportunities in the Middle East and Asia that we are going to see what happens on that front. We would like to grow our shower care products and we would  like to grow our operations here to be able to create more opportunities for women.

How can our readers connect with you?

Via Linkedin - Carolyn Crewe

Duckish - https://www.duckish.ca

BoomBox – for Tired Ass Women - https://www.duckish.ca/collections/boom-box

Entrepreneurs Organization - https://eocanada.com