30. Jacqueline Sava: Building the Soak Wash Brand
EPISODE 30
This episode highlights Jacqueline Sava's inspiring journey as the founder of Soak Wash, revealing her innovative approach to creating a product that cares for delicate clothing while prioritizing sustainability. She discusses education's role in fostering consumer relationships and navigating the challenges of entrepreneurship over nearly two decades of business.
Catch the Conversation
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There’s the stuff you toss in the washer, like your jeans, T-shirts and the kids’ sweatshirts. Then there are the clothes you coddle. The ones that say “this is me.” That’s the stuff you take care of with Soak.
Jacqueline Sava is the Director of Possibilities and Founder of Soak Wash Inc. Founded in 2006, Soak was a side-project for Jacqueline’s first business designing knitwear, and was created to fill a gap in the marketplace. Jacqueline identified that the care products available in retail environments at the time did not align with the clothing they were meant to wash. And so, Soak was born—a premium laundry solution that customers grew to love and trust.
Through Soak Wash Inc. (a proudly women-led company), Jacqueline has empowered individuals to take better care of their clothing by extending the life of their favorite pieces.
Our resellers are over 95% women owned businesses. Investing in Soak Wash Inc. is an investment in hundreds of women-owned and led business across the globe.
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Julie: 0:04
Welcome to Figure Eight, where we feature inspiring stories of women entrepreneurs who have grown their businesses to seven and eight figures revenue. If you're in the mix of growing a bigger business, these stories are for you. Join us as we explore where the tough spots are, how to overcome them and how to prepare yourself for the next portion of the climb. I'm your host, Julie Ellis. I'm an author, entrepreneur and a growth and leadership coach who co-founded, grew and exited an eight-figure business. This led me to exploring why some women achieve great things, and that led to my book, Big Gorgeous Goals. Let's explore the systems, processes and people that help us grow our businesses to new heights. If you're interested in growing your business, this podcast will help. Now let's get going. Hello and welcome to this episode of Figure 8.
Julie: 1:06
Today I'm talking with Jacqueline Sava, and Jacqueline founded her company Soak Wash almost 20 years ago. She makes a beautiful wash for all of your most important delicate items that you have crafted, worn, made all of the different places, and so she is at the helm of the company and is the director of possibilities, and they sell their soap wash all over the world. She's built an e-commerce business, she's gone to distribution, and it is always an interesting journey, as we're going to talk about today. It is always an interesting journey as we're going to talk about today. Soak Wash is made in Canada and it's free of dyes and phosphates, ammonia and harsh surfactants, which are the things that separate the dirt away from your clothes, and so she is also working in the space of sustainability and how we look after the things that we own.
Julie: 2:03
I want to say welcome to you and thanks for joining me, Jacqueline. thanks for having me. Thanks, it's so good to talk to you. Do you want to tell me a little bit about how you came to start this business and what it's been like for you over the last almost 20 years?
Jacqueline: 2:21
the detergent trajectory. I was designing knitwear. So my background is industrial design, so product design, and I was designing knitwear while I was doing my thesis at Rhode Island School of Design. And then when I graduated I was still doing knitwear. So I was hats and accessories, scarves, mittens, machine knit pieces and cut and sewn.
Jacqueline: 2:42
And when I started selling my knitwear, um, people were asking how to take care of it, and so I was selling it at craft shows like one of a kind and that kind of thing. And then I did get a wholesale like a distributor selling my knit accessories, and it kept coming back how do we take care of this? And we would say, um, you snuggle, use baby shampoo? Um, and then I was like this isn't really the right answer. And so I have a real core memory I had lunch with a colleague who worked in plastics manufacturing, where I had been doing some consulting work and she worked for a co packer, so someone who does private label packaging of soaps and stuff like that. And so she'd come to lunch and she'd bring me like a bubble bath or a shampoo where the label is backwards or like a lab sample, do you like this fragrance? And she'd always bring me these treats. And so I said to her one day over lunch. I said I wonder if we can make a wool wash that goes with the knits. And so that's how we develop the formula from a skincare background. So we call it skincare for your clothing with, like, naturally derived ingredients from a skincare background. So it's so gentle you could take a bath in it. That's kind of how that started.
Jacqueline: 3:47
And so Soak was originally a secondary product to go with my knitwear. And then, um, you know, things exploded from there. So it was our knitwear at the distributor with like a soak sitting next to it. And then we just started getting these inquiries about soak. And then someone said you know, there's this knitting industry and you could sell it to yarn stores, not just for finished knits.
Jacqueline: 4:08
And so my mom and I went to our first knitting trade show and we sent out all these bottle shaped postcards and we did this like big mail merge. I can remember, like you know, over the, you know you're single right, so you're over the holidays and you have like the tv trays around the sofa and you're watching movies, stuffing envelopes with postcards. Like literal mail, merge Right. And so we sent out all these postcards that was like come to the booth for a free sample. And then we walked in the convention center and there was like this massive lineup of people at our booth. Like it was like we didn't even say hello to each other for like five hours and that was kind of the beginning of Soak that's amazing, and that was kind of the beginning of Soak.
Julie: 4:45
That's amazing, well, and it does make sense, though, that when you're washing your most special things that you are also going to wear, that you want them to be washed with something really nice.
Jacqueline: 4:54
For sure, and we've learned that at Soak.
Jacqueline: 4:56
We try to take the fear out of hand washing and bring people we call it from fear to elation. Because a lot of people don't wear their favorite things because they don't know how they're going to take care of them. So we might buy cashmere socks or get fitted for a great bra or splurge on a sweater or have a great dress, but we don't wear it all the time because we're afraid we're going to spill something on it or we're going to get it dirty, or we're not and we don't know how to clean it, or we like wear it once and then we just like it out for a while. So at Soak we really want to teach people to take care of those things, because you feel better when you wear your favorite clothes, whether it's even if it's something at home, like if you have an antique quilt or you have a blanket that you love like. You feel better when you're cozy underneath it and you're not gonna like really use it unless you're comfortable with how you're going to take care of it.
Julie: 5:39
Yeah, I think that's so true. So, obviously, from that very first trade show, where you have that huge lineup, to where you are today, which is, you know, with a team and you know multiple currencies, lots of different countries, like all the things that have happened, how would you say you have changed over the time that you have grown this business?
Jacqueline: 6:04
Oh, my goodness. Well, I mean, you know, once the soap kind of got going, I went back to school part-time, at night, and did my MBA, because I realized pretty quickly that I didn't have the skill set that I needed to make these decisions and to grow the business, because I have a BFA, um, before that, industrial design. So I definitely decided I needed to know more. Um, and then, oh, I mean the, the learning curve, I mean it's so, it's steep, right, like I didn't. You know that first summer we shipped all those orders and we filled out the paperwork wrong and all the shipping and customs charges got sent to the customers.
Jacqueline: 6:51
So, yeah, like that first summer, all we did was like, and you, and because it went all on their courier accounts, you couldn't just solve the problem. You had to wait for, like, each person to realize that there was a problem and then solve the problem. So, um, yeah, just learning, like the multitude of things that we didn't even know, that we didn't know. That's my favorite question. Like, tell me what I don't know that I don't know, because I know what I don't know, but I don't know what I don't know that I don't know, and that's where I'm going to get in trouble. So sort of my go-to question.
Julie: 7:16
And so, and what's it like? I mean, I just think you're a very smart person, you got a graduate degree in business and you're an entrepreneur, and do you still? I know you still find so many things you still don't know. Like, how is it that that is the constant journey of entrepreneurship?
Jacqueline: 7:37
Well, I mean, I never worked in a big consumer package good company. So, um, pros and cons, right, pros, nimble, I have a good vision, I know what I want to do, I figure out how I'm going to get there. But we've always been like what's the problem, how we're going to solve it, versus like what's the strategy and how we're going to apply it. So, um, our vp, now my vp, suz magical, and I love her. I've known her for even before I started the business and when she was looking for a new job I was like this is going to sound really weird, but I would like first rights of refusal. I was like I don't know how much money you make, I don't know what you want to do, but I would like first rights of refusal.
Jacqueline: 8:17
For us to have a conversation, because she's come from a corporate background, so we will often like go full two halves of the circle to come to the same spot.
Jacqueline: 8:26
And even if it's like numbers forecasting risk how much of our market is, you know what percent of our market is in this territory work with those bigger corporate restraints, whether it's about margins, whether it's about distribution, whether it's about not going too fast, you know.
Jacqueline: 8:55
And then I come from more of an entrepreneurial perspective which is like this is where we're going, this is where we're doing, this is how we're getting there, and so that balance of trying to push forward and then still kind of validating is good. And it's not to say that I don't know what my margins are and look at them, but just there's, you know, it's just like a different kind of, it's like a different kind of math that we use to kind of get to the same spot. Um, so I think that's you know, and part of me wishes I had had that background before, and then part of me is really glad that I didn't have that background. So it's kind of hard to know sometimes, you know, because sometimes I'm like I sometimes I say like what would I do if I were a real company?
Julie: 9:34
I'm almost 20 years in.
Jacqueline: 9:35
maybe I am, but it's funny, right, because you don't feel like it, right, because people like I talked to somebody the other day who's doing like a really innovative washing situation and they were like we tested all these detergents and yours work the best and we want to move forward with yours as our preferred detergent for this washing system.
Jacqueline: 9:56
And I was like what you know, like it still sounded really. It still sounded really crazy to me, because I look at a bottle of soap and I and I still see it as like, like a project, right. Um, even like I went to Poland last year and we visited like tons of stores that carry our product and people who've been selling our product for a decade, and they're like, you know, you always have to make this, don't ever stop, whatever. And I'm like looking at it with Polish labels and I'm like, is this real? Like, for me, it sort of still doesn always seem real, which I think is also a sign that it's still fun and good for me to work on. But I you know other people are just like oh, of course it's Soak, right. I'm like, oh, okay, sure, yeah.
Julie: 10:36
It is so interesting. Well and we've talked about, I mean, how the challenge of you know, scaling up this business where you're selling many, many, many small items like your, you know your ticket price is small and and what that looks like compared to you know somebody who's selling $10,000 items when you're selling $10 items, is very, very different in terms of what complexities come to play.
Jacqueline: 11:03
Yeah, we are suffering from, like, the problems for a business that typically, with an overall revenue, is much bigger than ours, so we are always perceived to be bigger than we are. Also because we've done a really excellent job at branding and positioning and marketing. Like I was at a lingerie trade show in New York and there was kind of this like brand speed dating thing and with buyers and brands, and I was like this is new, I'm going to, I'll do this. And so I was talking to this woman. She had a store in Washington DC. I really she's like I really love Soak, it's really great. But we're our focus is really supporting, you know, women owned businesses, independent businesses, small businesses. You know we don't I love your wash but I don't really want to buy from like a giant conglomerate and I was like okay. And I was like okay, let's like, let's start this conversation again. I was like so my last 10 messages are, like you know, my husband trying to figure out which lighting to put in our new renovated office. And like these are the pictures of my kids in the warehouse. And there are eight of us and we're women owned and you know we're really little and like you know. So she just fully like, just perceived we were like this giant detergent brand you know, um, and of course then she ordered soak and good customer and all those kind of things. But it was really I find it really fascinating because people have like a much bigger like perception of where we are and it's, you know, it's on purpose. We launched, with really strong marketing, a lot of product photography. You know, taking a picture of liquid in a bottle is really hard. So we, even on day one, we launched with a full, you know, we used Flickr back in the day if that doesn't, if that doesn't date us, I don't know what will but we launched with a database on Flickr where our customers and media could use the images that we produce, so that we'd have brand continuity. So it's kind of this mix of like big brand games, even though we're like a smaller brand in that sense.
Jacqueline: 12:44
So yeah, which is, which is really an interesting way to position yourself. Yeah, I mean we're, we're a premium wash. We, because we're made in Canada, because we have high quality ingredients, because we use post-consumer resin plastic and also because competing on prices like we knew from the beginning, completing on price is not going to get you anywhere in this category. One like from a traditional detergent standpoint and two like as a small business in Canada. If we, if we position on price like somebody can always be cheaper, that's not where we're going to, where we're going to be.
Jacqueline: 13:18
So we've always positioned ourselves on like we want to be the wash that's next to the clothes you love, love most and that you trust and take care of it. Because once we have that trust with our customers then then it's solidified and it kind of grows. But it is true that, like a bottle retails for 18 and so when you work back to like wholesale pricing or distributor pricing, we are running a lot of bottles, um, a lot of bottles through our, through our warehouse and through our spreadsheets and through our math and even our little single use samples. I mean they are like a gift with purchase. We order them like 200 000 a time, several times a year. So there's a lot of, a lot of little units going through. So, yeah, maybe my next business. We joke like diamonds, right, like high value, small scale, everyone in the industry and I don't want to go there. But if I have to think about like business number two, it's definitely like high value, small size.
Julie: 14:06
Yeah, and that has different problems attached to it. That's the part I'm interested in, because I mean, at Mabel's Labels, we did 25% of our sales in one month of the year. That month was August, and so you have to act like you're going to do that amount of sales in every single month. You need to, you know, think about your supply chain and does your website have enough bandwidth? And it's so. I mean, that was one of our big problems and, like every challenge is hard to solve in its own way.
Jacqueline: 14:35
Absolutely. Yeah, I had. I met someone when we were really little and he was, I feel like he was like somebody I knew's father, who was in business or whatever and he said, like you're always going to have problems and challenges, they're just going to get bigger and different. And at the time I didn't understand it and now I absolutely understand it. So I'm not afraid of problems and challenges, I like that and they are just, they're always there, they're always just bigger and they're always just different.
Julie: 15:01
And that idea that it's like a closed system, like as soon as you overcome any challenge, be it big or small, it will reveal the next one, like there's a whole process of like the challenges don't end, so you can't actually like ever be like huh, I think I'm done.
Jacqueline: 15:19
Yeah, for sure, and I and I love, I love that about it. You know, when I'm really exhausted of work and not so much post-pandemic, because I do a mix of working at home and at the office but when I used to commute every day to the office, I'd be like, okay, if I don't want to go to work, I'm going to get in the car, think of something I would rather do between when I leave and when I get to my office. Then I can like contemplate, exploring, doing something else. But if I can't think of something else that I would rather do than this total storm, then I have to go to work that day. So that was sort of how I would, you know, and like maybe once or twice I would just divert and go to the rowing club and be like, actually what I need to do is like, yeah, no, there's not anything else that I want to do more than this. So have at her, you know.
Julie: 16:07
Yeah, and even going for the workout doesn't mean you don't want to do this. It means you need some space to clear your head, exactly.
Jacqueline: 16:14
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that's cleaning your head. I think is one of the hardest things because there are only so many hours in the day, so really allocating time to clear your head is pretty important. Yeah.
Julie: 16:30
And what would you say?
Jacqueline: 16:31
the best things have been for you about growing this business. I really love the amount of people like the people that we get to work with and the countries that we get to go to Traveling for work is hard. I have another trip in two days and I'm like manic. I'm never a friendly person the day before I travel. Everybody on our team, including my husband, knows that but I think that for me, it's the people like we don't set.
Jacqueline: 16:53
We're not just a d2c brand. We sell through distributors, we sell through stores, and so the amount of people whose lives are enriched by getting to sell soak is as amazing for me as it is just the people whose lives are enriched for having the product and using it at home, because not only contributing to the income of, like my whole team which I think is amazing that I like keep people employed, that's very cool but also the amount of revenue that it generates for like the I don't know somewhere near a thousand probably independent retailers that sell our product as well, right, and I think that's really cool. And because Soaks is a care product. So if you're a lingerie shop and somebody comes in to buy a bra, you want to teach them how to take care of it because if they throw their bra in the washing machine and it gets all twisted and mangled, they're not going to blame themselves, they're not going to blame the bra, they're going to come back to the shop owner and be like you sold me a crappy bra, you sold me a bra that will get tangled, and so Soak helps kind of mitigate that risk for the shop owner as well and so it adds value for them to make them be able to give something to their customer of value as well, to help kind of mitigate that risk of unhappy customers.
Jacqueline: 18:07
So I really love the people that we meet and that's one of my favorite parts about traveling, like when I went to Poland, as I said, and we did store visits, or whether I'm at a trade show or we do a couple, do a couple of big consumer events a year where we get to be face-to-face with our end users as well and talk to them and then collaborating with brands and and that kind of thing. So I really love. I really love that aspect of it.
Julie: 18:28
Yeah Well, and I think it's that like. It gives you that ability to educate as well, for people to learn how they can talk to their customers in a way that you know it extends the life of their product and, you know, puts them in that trusted kind of you know position for the customer.
Jacqueline: 18:49
Yeah, and education is one of our values, and so it's not just about educating people on how to use Soak. It's about educating people on how to do business better. Like we make an upsell product, like we're the shoe polish to the soak. It's about educating people on how to do business better, like we make an upsell product, like we're the shoe polish to the shoes. So you want to make more money. You can't sell more shoes shall sell everybody shoe polish, right. So you know, if you add soak onto your transaction, you will make more money per transaction.
Jacqueline: 19:10
So we do a lot of educating for our customers on how to make more money in their shops or how to merchandise in their shops or how to cross sell things in their shops, and also in our team we try to work hard to give people educational opportunities as well, like what is it that you want to know about the business that's not under your wheelhouse, that you want to learn, right? How do you want to be a better person? How do you want to communicate better? How do you want to train people better? So it's really how do you want to grow as a person? So for us at Soak, it's as important about how you're going to grow as an individual, as it is about how you're going to do the functional tasks of your job, and that's something I'm really leaning into moving forward, because, you know, our warehouse team are the people who touch the product before it gets into your hands, right, so they're a very important part of the process, right, everybody has an option, an opportunity to learn, to grow, to develop.
Jacqueline: 19:56
Everybody has an option, an opportunity to learn, to grow, to develop, and so we do do a lot of training. So it's not just how do you take care of your sweater that you've worn for, you know, we, we always the person who's like oh, I was in Ireland 20 years ago. I brought this beautiful Irish sweater. I've never washed it. Okay, you know, not only that experience of like what you should feel like when you have a freshly washed, a freshly soaked sweater all the way to. You know, can we help a shop owner make more money in their store? Right, cause we are all in, we're in business. We're not in nonprofit, we're in business. So how can I help you make more money in your store, or a distributor make more money? So that educational aspect, I really, I really love seeing people kind of learn and benefit from something that we created. It's pretty cool.
Julie: 20:40
That is very cool. How long into your journey did you decide that you wanted to create values for the company?
Jacqueline: 20:50
Well, we started Soak as a secondary product and we have, like we're coming close to our 20th anniversary in 2026. And we sort of have like a loose start date. We kind of had to create one because we didn't really have a finite date, because it kind of evolved from the knitwear business and in 2008, we actually did a lot of work about like values. That's when we developed the concept of soak worthy, soak worthiness and what is soak worthy and what does that mean, and actually really giving it a definition, definition and having values and stuff, because we had a goal of what we were trying to do. And then, all of a sudden, within a couple years, the market was kind of reflecting back to us what was important. So, two years in is when we set a lot of those guiding principles in place.
Jacqueline: 21:31
Um, and then I feel like we're kind of going through a little bit of a renaissance in terms of making sure that we're really living those all the way through our whole organization. And then a few years ago, when we started the process of updating our website, we really were looking at what our you know, what our brand pillars are, what our profiles are, how they're evolving with the marketplace and the industry are how they're evolving with the marketplace and the industry. You know, we started using post-consumer resin for our bottles in 2012, when it was more expensive and not really readily available, you know. And then people like, well, why aren't you like talking sustainability more? And I was like, well, because we already been doing that already. That's just what we do, you know. So trying to also feel like what pillars have longevity versus which ones are trendy.
Julie: 22:22
Yeah, and then it is interesting because, although you've been doing it for a long time, yeah, what's the like we're still here and we're still sustainable?
Jacqueline: 22:29
aspect to um, you know they they talk about like how you have to tell people over and over and over again, right, yeah, we've not always been the best at telling people over and over again, because we yeah, we've not always been the best at telling people over and over again, because we also are consumers and we don't like to get like bombarded. And also, if you don't tell people over and over again, they don't know. And also, like, sometimes you have to look at. I think the things that are interesting for me are like we make. I make liquid. It's in a plastic bottle. I order 100,000 plastic bottles at a time. I understand that the world does not want more plastic bottles and also the world doesn't want to pay for glass and the world doesn't want to transport glass and the world is not ready for recycling glass right now at the price point and volumes where we are. So there's always this like you know what is what is sustainable and also what are people willing to pay for? Right, because and and that I think has a lot to do with scale, because I can formulate a wash that is organic and I can't really sell it. You know what I mean Like, like people won't pay for it, for what it costs, and also we've always been really true to like around sustainability, like real information.
Jacqueline: 23:37
There's a lot of greenwashing I'm sure you've heard that expression and especially around chemicals. We are chemicals. We go to chemistry class right H2O chemical, right, water is a chemical. So there's this conversation around like what is a chemical and you know what is organic and what is sustainable and what is biodegradable and that kind of thing. So we we get in those different spaces to try to talk to people and understand truly what things are out like.
Jacqueline: 24:07
It's a liquid in a bottle. Water needs preservatives, water-based ingredients. That's why, like, your lipstick is oil-based, it has no water. That's why you can find your grandmother's and then you can like pick it up and put it on right, because there's no water in it, so there's no bacteria developing there, you know. But we need preservatives and we need a product that's shelf stable, because it's going to go in stores and it's going to sit in the window where there's UV light and temperature change and that kind of thing.
Jacqueline: 24:32
So there's always this balance between being transparent with what's in the product and how you're marketing it, versus still making sure something that can have like a proper P&L where you can actually sell it right, because we're, all you know, trying to pay for hockey lessons. What can I say right, like you know, when I first talked and I used to lecture, I used to talk about cat food because, like when you're single, people assume that you can just like eat ramen and craft dinner and be fine. But if I'm like I need enough money at the end of the day to buy cat food, they're like oh the kitties, everybody wants the cats to have like good food, right? They're like you can survive on ramen, depending on what you're, you know.
Julie: 25:23
But yeah, I used to be like we need to have enough money at the end of the day to buy cat food. Yeah, no, I think it's an interesting point about how you find your place in the sea of claims that you could make and also in what's viable in terms of making real business out of it, and then how you sort of stand by the values that you have to guide you as you make all of those decisions.
Jacqueline: 25:36
Yeah, and I've done a lot of teaching and like post-grad stuff on design strategy and I've worked with Lentero Crafts Council. I have like a course that I did called From Maker to Making a Living. That was like helping people who are on a small scale really understand their pricing and understand what they're doing and that they're actually making money. And it's not. It's not from place of judgment, I don't. I'm thrilled if you want to be in business, if you make five units or 5,000 or 500,000,. What I care about is that you understand what you need personally, like financially, to take home for your family or your life, and that your business is meeting those needs right. So it's not, it's not. I'm all for like an organic detergent that costs like forty five dollars for a little amount, and if the person making that can sustain a profitable business doing that, then you know, have at her.
Julie: 26:27
What have been some of your big challenges as you've grown the business? Yeah, um.
Jacqueline: 26:36
So we went through a round of like bc financing in 2008 when I was finishing my mba. One of the um I did this managing venture growth and transition course and one of the professors and one of the um guests were interested in investing in soak to help us scale and um to be to be part of accurate statistics. That deal fell through at the 11th and a half hour um through no fault of mine. Um just like an investor change of lifestyle kind of situation, and so that was a big challenge because we had started to scale up, I had hired people, I had got an office, I had done all these things because we were in like two years of normal due diligence and everything was almost done and we signed the papers one way and then they didn't get signed back um.
Jacqueline: 27:18
So I can remember that day crystal clearly um not a fun day um, but in retrospect like we worked with our accountant at the time to like get bank financing and to get all these things in place, to like deal with all the growth that we had just put in um. And then that turned out to kind of be a blessing in disguise, because that was right before the 2008 recession and we had like bank financing and things like that in place for long enough that we were able to sustainably like get through that phase. So it was kind of like a blessing in disguise, because I have a lot of friends in that early on phase who had to take like hiatuses from their businesses because they just their loans got pulled or whatever, and so we were able to be up and running enough to keep going through that, which I think was also really helpful when the pandemic hit, because I was like I'm not doing this twice.
Jacqueline: 28:16
So when they listed like all the businesses that could stay open or whatever, I was like, okay, we need to be on that list. Like we need to. Whatever it is, we need to figure out how to be on that list that gets to stay open. I was like because if I have to like shut down, I don't think I can, like I don't think I can do this again, so we have to like figure out how to stay open. You know, and so you did, and so we did. Yeah, and I think you know, because I, you know I'm really good with numbers.
Jacqueline: 28:40
I love the finance side of the business. I love, you know, I'm always looking at our numbers and our finance. I was able to, you know, we took advantage of a lot of the subsidies and a lot of the wage subsidies and things like that and really dig into like how are we going to best manage our, our business, to kind of get through this, and also like getting credit when you don't need credit. That's like my favorite tip right when things are good, is when you push your like operating line limit Right, because during the pandemic, we like, we, it was big, we, you couldn't well, you couldn't do anything Right. But we like scraped, you know, in order to stay up and to keep and to support our business, we scraped the very bottom of that barrel before you know coming back out and there's no way you could have gotten that money at that time.
Julie: 29:26
You needed to go in already having it in place. That's great advice for other entrepreneurs, yeah.
Jacqueline: 29:40
I was really surprised at that time by how many fellow entrepreneurs do not have deep operating lines. That's like my number one advice like as deep as you can get, we'll stop Right. Like I was really surprised when I talked to people that were like, oh, I only have like a $20,000 operating line or a $40,000. I was like no, no, hundreds of thousands of dollars operating line. Like as, push that limit as far as you can get it when you don't need it, so that it's there in case you do.
Julie: 30:04
Yeah, being able to have any kind of forward vision on it, as opposed to rearview mirror of like oh, that broke and it really broke.
Jacqueline: 30:11
Yeah, I mean, I think finding the right people who are comfortable saying how are we going to do this versus this is how we always did it. We've had a couple of like full sort of full staff turnovers over the years, because in the beginning you have generalists who like to do everything and then as you start to bring in specialists, the generalists don't like to give up parts of their job, and I think that's really challenging for people to understand. Like I'm bringing in more people so you can do your job better, but they're like but you're taking away part of my job. I was like no, I'm really just kind of helping you do what you do best. So I think that's kind of a fascinating. That's always fascinating for me is because some people are forward-looking and some people are not, and that's always a challenge.
Jacqueline: 30:58
Right, like well, that's how we do this. I was like well, that's how we did it at this scale, but that we're not going to be able to do that at this scale, and that's why I think you know we don't have a lot of time right now to like blue sky as a team, like I think that's one thing I'm not doing as much of that I used to, or like teaching people like let's try to figure this out, right. Like how would we do this if we had five times as much volume going through here? Because when you say something crazy like that, then they can't just be like oh well, we print it out and we enter it here and we bring it over to that desk and we pile it up there. And I was like, was like well, not if you had five times as much, right yeah, yeah, it's the like you know.
Jacqueline: 31:39
You can only run faster for so long before you've got to do things in an entirely new way so yeah, yeah so we're open to doing things in a new way, and I think that's definitely something that we have the luxury of pushing for right now, cause sometimes you don't have the luxury to do what you want to do Sometimes you're like I really want to do it this way, but I don't get to Right, and so I think that that's really interesting for me is to be able to like push through the luxury of like being able to do that Right.
Julie: 32:11
So yes, yeah, the difference between going through those phases where you're just trying to keep your head above water to the phases where you can actually be like what if it was five times as much? What would that look like? How could we do things? What could we change now to help us be there more easily?
Jacqueline: 32:29
like getting to be choosier about who you work with. Like I often say, now I'm not gonna. I'm not teaching anyone how to do their job anymore. You have to come to the table knowing how to do your job well, and it used to be like I can't afford the person who can do their job well, or I, you know or they or they don't want to work with me because I'm too small right now.
Jacqueline: 32:50
Small right now. Yeah, exactly Right. And that getting that shift of that sort of shift of power, I guess a little bit has been great. I was like what's the word?
Julie: 33:00
I was like the word is great. Yeah, it's just great, great and so. And so, what's next for you? What's next for for Jacqueline the entrepreneur? What's next for Soak?
Jacqueline: 33:11
uh well, we're coming up to our 20th anniversary, so we have a big project on the horizon, um, which I'm excited about. We just acquired so fine thread gloss, which is a small canadian company which is I don't even know if I have one on my desk near me, but it's a thread gloss for um sewing and it fit really nicely. So I always tell people like you can, um, you know, find a new rock to roll up your hill, or you can take your rock and roll it up another hill, but like a new rock and a new hill is a new business, like that classic expression. So thread gloss is like a new rock up our hill. Um, it was a company, a canadian company, that wanted to stay canadian, made um and just couldn't scale. It was a part-time business for someone, an awesome woman named jen um, and she approached us and it's really, you know, know, aligned with us from a pricing standpoint, from a care standpoint. It's more on the maker side than the lingerie apparel side, but still a great Canadian story. And we have all those distributors. So now we're just at the beginning of marketing it and getting it back out on a more regular and consistent basis to our customers. So that's exciting. Plus, it was really good learning to do that little acquisition. It was like the right scale. It was a good scale for learning about business acquisition and that kind of thing.
Jacqueline: 34:23
Um, and then for me I mean I'm going to try this. I really I don't believe in New Year's resolutions and recapping the year and stuff like that. So try to stay away from that stuff this time of year. But um cause, also, our fiscal year is September.
Julie: 34:39
Um, yes, so it makes sense that you're doing more things at that time.
Jacqueline: 34:43
Yeah, yeah, we also. We don't like our customers are predominantly women and, as like avant-garde as we all want to be, most women are dealing with holiday things that do not involve themselves. So we do not peak in Q4. We have a pretty steady business, you know, in the summer, where people wear less, you need better lingerie and you wash it more often when you're sweating, and then also in the winter, when you're a maker and you're in your making mode.
Jacqueline: 35:09
It's often January, because it's like I do all the stuff for my family or for everybody else in my life over the holidays, and then in January I like buy my yard and start knitting or making or doing all the things. So so summer's big for us, january is big for us, like the traditional cleaning, laundry and spring cleaning kind of season, but we're pretty flat. So we don't have a big kind of holiday queue for. But I would like to get back to having more forward planning time, because when you're so busy in the, in the present you time, because when you're so busy in the, in the present you don't have a lot of forward planning.
Jacqueline: 35:42
And I'm yeah, you need to do the look up and the pull up right Every so often to help you Definitely haven't had time to do the um look up and pull up um recently because we've been so overwhelmed Um, and so that's a thing that I definitely have to add in. And we're not, you know, we're not like, yeah, I'm not like crazy huge, giant, unattainable goal kind of person. I'm pretty realist, I'm pretty much a realist. So, um, yeah, so, but I do have some, you know, kind of bigger projects, so, and it's also kind of like balancing the reality of like people and time and hours. Like you can have crazy big goals but you either require like people or money.
Julie: 36:19
Yes, that's figuring out. It is figuring out how to pace them and what you can do and how to get where you want to go.
Jacqueline: 36:26
Yeah, the only true I mean in my experience, the only true way to like scale faster than that is a huge um, a huge influx of money which can bring you more people right Cause otherwise there's only so many hours in the day, so, um, I'm always kind of toying with that. I'm very, you know, I haven't done a real growth pitch deck plan thing since 2008, since I did it when I was in school and I definitely feel like I'm due for that um, because I'm not yeah, and that's where the, that's where the what if it was five times or ten times bigger?
Julie: 36:54
and how would you do things differently? Really would would play out for you in that process.
Jacqueline: 37:00
Yeah, because we do have. It's pretty easy from like a sales remnant and standpoint with our different distributors and stuff to really map out that growth. But it's another thing to be able to get there quickly. So I do feel like that is on my list of things I want to do. But then again, you know, with the day to day of operations like you know we, you know I don't, I know we don't sometimes the podcast you're like sensitive to like what season it is or what date it is.
Jacqueline: 37:22
But right now you know, if we want to timestamp this, you know President Elect Trump and his US tariff is, like you know, tariff threats are on the horizon and so for as much time as I want to allocate to like blue skying in the month of December, I'm actually doing risk mitigation analysis because 60% of the business is in the US. So it's like, yeah, I can take the time that's blocked in my calendar to do high growth planning, except, like that is unfortunately the first stuff that gets wiped out when you have, you know, these other issues that you have come in from the side.
Julie: 37:52
Yeah, yeah. And so it's figuring out how to not get too caught in that it's always issues coming in Right, and to find that balance of of uh swing swinging in between them. Yeah exactly.
Jacqueline: 38:05
So, um, I think that's one of my kind of personal goals, Um, and also like really just being aware that I, you know I have, I have young kids and you know everyone has families, whether they're young, whether they're old or whether it's just themselves. We're really aware at Soak that people, you know, people first, we always say family first and there are no detergent emergencies, and so sometimes you really have to say that to people. So, really making sure people, you know, have their time off, get their breaks, do their thing, you know, have their time off, get their breaks, do their thing, Because, again, you know we're not, you know we're doing I think it's important work and and offering an important product to the market, and also like we're not saving lives so.
Julie: 38:46
So finding balance in all the things is a key part. It's also probably why you've been able to have longevity. It makes a big difference.
Jacqueline: 38:54
I think. So, yeah, think that you know we really want. You know I love like, I love being in like a category that has less competitors. And I'm not talking about, like, traditional detergent, I'm talking about specialty detergent. Um, because I go to, you know, the knitting trade show and everybody makes yarn and I was like, well, it could be worse, you could make yarn. You know I like to. You know it's a harder, it's a, it's a more uphill battle to be in such a, in a smaller category, but I think it's more interesting. You get to be more nimble and you get to have, you know, be a little more creative with it. So I like that aspect of it. Um, so, from that's, that's part of the good.
Julie: 39:35
well, I cannot wait to see where you go from here and I'm going to look forward with excitement to seeing your 20 year um special project come to life.
Jacqueline: 39:45
I can't believe that. I don't even know how we got. I don't even know how that many years went by, so oh, it's so good.
Julie: 39:51
It's so good. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. My pleasure, good, well, thank you so much for joining me today my pleasure. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please remember to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you won't miss any episodes. Figure eight isn't just a podcast. It's a way of seeing the big, gorgeous goals of women entrepreneurs coming to life. If you're interested in learning more, you can find my book Big, gorgeous Goals on Amazon, anywhere you might live, for more about my growth and leadership training programs. Visit wwwjulieellisca to see how we might work together. Read my blog or sign up to get your free diagnostic. Are you ready for growth? Once again, that's wwwjulieellisca. When we work together, we all win. See you again soon for another episode of Figure 8.