Hot Smart Rich with Maggie Sellers Reum - Kristine Locker, Founder of Locker, On Building a Multimillion Dollar Fashion Tech And Betting Everything On What's Next

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

In this episode of Hot Smart Rich, I sit down with Kristine Locker—founder & CEO of Locker, the social shopping platform that’s redefining how we shop, save, and discover products online. From starting her career in real estate finance at Goldman Sachs to self-funding her startup for two years with $225,000 before landing a game-changing $1M angel investment, Kristine’s journey is proof that big risks lead to even bigger rewards. But building a multi-million dollar consumer startup isn’t just about great ideas—it’s about navigating investor rejection, learning from bad decisions (like an $8K influencer campaign gone wrong), and understanding what today’s consumers actually want. We also dive into the new wave of creator-led brands—like Parke, Dairy Boy, and Set Active—and the backlash some are facing for bootstrapping their businesses through supplier terms, the drop model, and negative cash conversion cycles. Kristine shares her perspective as a founder on how these strategies impact growth, customer loyalty, and whether this is the future of consumer brands. If you’ve ever had 100 open tabs while debating a purchase, returned a wish list item you finally bought, or wondered why brands keep pushing affiliate links instead of listening to consumers, this episode is for you. Kristine and I get into the real talk about startup life, from fundraising challenges to the mental toll of being a founder, and why she’s betting everything on what’s next for Locker and social commerce. WHAT WE COVER: The Wishlist Struggle Is Real – Why we overthink purchases and how Locker is changing that From Open Tabs to Millions – Kristine’s path from bootstrapping to landing a $1M angel investment The Influencer vs. Community Debate – Why Locker is built for real shoppers, not influencers How Locker Grew to 200K Users With Zero Paid Ads – Kristine’s strategy for scaling without big marketing budgets Creator-Led Brands Under Fire – The backlash against brands like Parke, Dairy Boy, and Set Active for their drop model and supplier-backed scaling strategies Running a Startup and Having a Life? – How Kristine balances marriage, career, and the pressure of building a billion-dollar business Lessons for Founders – The best (and worst) $8K Kristine ever spent on marketing, and why brand loyalty matters more than ever ✨CONNECT WITH MAGGIE SELLERS✨ Instagram:⁠⁠@maggiesellers⁠⁠ TikTok:⁠⁠@maggiesellers_ YouTube:⁠⁠@hotsmartrich⁠⁠ LinkedIn:⁠⁠Maggie Sellers⁠⁠ ✨CONNECT WITH KRISTINE LOCKER✨ Instagram: ⁠⁠@kristinelocker Shop With Kristine on Locker ✨READ THE NEWSLETTER✨ HSR ICYMI⁠⁠ – Stay ahead with consumer startup trends, business news, and investing insights. ✨SHOP HOT SMART RICH✨ HSR Merch⁠⁠ Shop My⁠⁠

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Saving those children is how we all go home. From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. In case you missed it, you're allowed to be hot, smart, and rich. So let's get into it. Okay, Christine Locker. Are you ready to get Hot Smart Rich? Let's do it. I wanted to start with some, you know, people do rapid fire at the end,

but I just feel like rapid fire will like let us get loose and we're probably going to get very deep. So I figured we'd start there. Perfect. Let's do it. What is your name for everybody that doesn't know? Christine Locker now Pluger? What? Coffee, cocktail, or tea?

Coffee. But wait. Are you asking me? If you could only pick one for the rest of your life, coffee, cocktail, or tea? Definitely not tea. Macha? No, I don't drink matcha. It tastes like dirt.

Kind of agree, but like low-key, don't tell anybody that. I do not. Just the internet. What time do you wake up and what time do you usually go to bed at? I wake up between like 5.30 and 6 every day. To an alarm. I used to do that before I started eating Courtney. Now what time do you wake up?

Like seven. Oh, God, that's so late. I'm just kidding. No, it is late. It, like, it traumatizes me. But yeah, keep going. What time do you go to bed? I usually go to bed by, like, 10 or 11.

And do you have a really good nighttime routine? Like, do you read a book? What do you do before bed? Well, I used to until I got married or, like, started dating. Okay. But we watched, like, TV at night. What show are you binging? Gray's Anatomy right now.

I feel like you're the third person that's told me that. Are you on the new season or old school? I'm old still. Okay. I think we're, like, on season seven right now. What is an item currently on your wish list? I just got one. Um, I just got the Botega.

Which one? Well, I got the Andiamo. Is that the one that I have? That's one that you have in red. I got it in brown. Okay. I decided it didn't match with enough. So I returned it.

Okay. And I just bought the Botega. This is old and everyone's going to like at me for it because. Because you run a fashion company? Yeah, because it's old, but I still love it. I love it. I love it. You like look in the camera.

Yeah, whatever. Everybody. Um, no, I just got the pouch. What is your most regretted piece that you've purchased? Probably anything I've ever. bought from Zara. Like such an impulse. Wait, I thought that it was not at all going to be your answer.

Like, it was going to be like an expensive designer that you regretted buying. But it's really just like things you don't think through. Yeah, it's like things I buy too quickly that are really bad quality. And then like you have to keep wearing them because you're like, why do I buy that? Yeah. And then also what do you do with it? You know, it's like you can't really like at least with designer you can resell it, which I'm like a huge proponent of.

I think I'm a lot on trends as it relates to startups and beauty and like things that like in my body but fashion like I am not the girl that's like setting trends that's why I work with a stylist because I want to be but like it's just not inherently in me but like I always used to have such bad buying anxiety over like what if I get this bag now like the boutegat that I just got that I still don't even know the name of I was like well that was in like even a season ago is it's still going to be in do you just think boutega is a brand that's like never going to go out again I love them what is a brand to watch that you're seeing trending on your app well depends are we talking luxury Are we talking?

Did anything come to your brain for either luxury or just like mainstream? I mean, the brand that is like currently being saved like a frenzy is like park. Which we need to talk about. Yeah. So I have a very large message. I need to put my book away for anybody that is hating on the brand's park, dairy boy, and set active. Okay. And I say this as somebody that like has never bought Park Dairy Boy or Set Active, okay?

They are doing a tale as old as time, a proven financial trick, not even trick, a proven financial system. they are using something called a negative cash conversion cycle. And this is how most fashion brands that have not raised venture capital have built billion dollar companies like a Jim Shark. Jim Shark literally uses their supply chain to fuel the growth of their company. A negative cash conversion cycle for anybody that doesn't know is essentially allowing, you have to measure the amount of time it takes you to get your inventory from your supplier, how long you have to pay them back.

How quickly you can get them to your customer, how long it takes you to actually receive the payment from your customer. If you get the money from your customer before you pay your supplier, you essentially have a negative cash conversion cycle. You therefore can use your inventory to fuel your growth. The amount of hate that these girls are getting over a financial tool that has been used by millions of companies is crazy to me. What do you think about all of this hate towards Park and Dairy Boy and Set Active? I think it's crazy. We actually, right before this, I had a call with the park team. We've worked with them to do like community giveaways for a locker, which is amazing.

I don't understand it. People on the consumer side don't know what goes into building the business. And I think Chelsea Park in particular in this case was accused of creating like scarcity. Which by the way, can I just interrupt for a second? Scarcity marketing is the number one marketing trick in the world. Like that is what every brand uses. Like why don't you direct your hate towards Chanel and Botega? then. Yeah, and she was saying, like, essentially, because I just, like, told her on the call,

I was like, you handled that so beautifully. I was like, it's hard to even have to feel that you need to apologize for people freaking out that they couldn't get a product, that you couldn't have predicted the amount of traffic that came to your website regardless. But she was like, yeah, we were accused of scarcity marketing, which, like, obviously you want to create demand for your product. She was like, but we were not trying to trick people. She was like, we were not, if we could have sold 80,000 sweatshits, we would. would have sold 80,000 sweatshirts. We planned this drop months ago and could never have predicted that this would have been. So for anybody that's listening that doesn't know what's happening,

so these are all brands, I would say that have been started by creators. Like, oh, we were what, a set active, a dairy boy park, daily drills. And they're founded by creators. And they were accused, almost all of them over the last few months, of essentially using scarcity and a drop model, to almost create a frenzy for women that wanted to go onto their side and buy it that weren't able to get it. And the feedback and the backlash on TikTok was almost like such toxic hate towards the female founders that they had to come online and basically make apology videos. And in the process, actually open up what stress they are dealing with as a founder to be able

to manage orders that they never thought were going to come in. And you spoke to Chelsea directly. and what else did she have to say about it? She just said that for like she obviously never wants anybody to feel this way about her business until like going forward they're going to be adjusting how they think about inventory going like I guess inventory going forward. But it's hard to predict you don't want to order too much. You don't want to order not enough.

It's like really hard on them. Because you said that's like the number one product that's trending on your company. Can you just give a little bit of a background and like more like the functional side of what locker is supposed to do? Yeah. So essentially, my background is not in this space at all. I started my career in real estate. So I built Locker to solve my own personal pain points. You can think about Locker essentially like Pinterest for online shopping. So if you're browsing on any brand website, you can save any product that you want to think about buying to your locker to save it for later. And then each user, like you have a profile, I have a profile. We can follow each other. So there's a social component to it as well. So you can create a giftable wish list, send your wish list to anybody you want and share your curations as a non-influentary. And so when you're looking at the back end side of it, you're seeing that something like Park is trending. Are you sending that to her ahead of a drop and being like,

by the way, we're seeing like a ton of influx or how do you usually work with brands? Yeah. For Park in particular, it doesn't necessarily work that way because they are on more of like a drop model versus like a free people or an anthropology or a revolve that doesn't function in that way. So for somebody like Park, the products that we're seeing post drop doesn't necessarily help them from a data perspective because they've either sold out or like we could tell them for maybe things that didn't sell in the drop, but it wouldn't be as impactful. But for brands like Revolve or free people, we can see which ones of their products are being saved, which ones are being converted on and we can share that data with them. Are there any big trends that you can see based on what is being saved for spring or like what are people even shopping for right now in February? Spring break. Spring break is in the number one searched term on Locker since December.

Wow. And so what are people saving like what brands or products? Like what do you think is like the most sought after right now? Minus Park. Yeah. I mean, Park wouldn't really even like fall into spring break necessarily. But like for spring break, we've been seeing like a ton of like anything sequin this year. Really? Interesting. Sequin skirts, sequin dresses. Like sequin embellishment too, which is really interesting. Okay. Also the demographic you have to remember for the most part is like 18 to 34. So, like, I don't know. Yeah, college girls or post-college. Yeah, exactly.

Like, planning out their spring break outfits. In terms of brands, it's kind of across, like, what you would imagine. It's the revolves. It's free people. We see a ton of, like, small owned businesses. Emerging businesses or brands and designers. Yeah. Which is always really fun to see.

And so when a user is downloading locker, they're doing it to essentially plan what they want to buy for different trips or purchases. Are they also, like, creating looks with those items? Yeah, we have our collage. feature. So people can put looks together. You can also just essentially like I don't use the collage feature as much. I just put everything look wise in a collection and I can like envision, okay, these jeans with this top or whatever. But people will put collages together and be like this top, this skirt, these shoes, sunglasses and bag. Do you find for your personal style? Like where do you find your inspiration from?

I feel like it's like a combination of things. I mean, I do a lot of searching on social media in general. I love looking at influencers and what they're wearing or my friends. And then from there I go and like find it. Yes. I was actually going to ask you like who are the influencers or creators that you actually look to for fashion style. Do you know who styled Sarah is? No. Oh my God.

Sarah Walker. She's an LA girl. Styled Sarah is her user. Okay. I'm obsessed with it. Is she a locker user? No. Okay.

She's on my like list. Wait, this is literally Christine. This is why you're one of my best friends and we also work together because it's like I literally wrote favorite people to follow and then celebrity like creator wishlist like so she's on the wish list she's on my wish list okay keep going for people you want to work with and who you also look to for style yeah so styled saris if i could replace my closet with one person's it would be hers she has an incredible closet okay who else do i like really love style wise i feel like i mean celebrity wise like heyley beeper yeah also do you know who lorne ratner is yes okay i'm obsessed with her too gab waller does a lot of

her sourcing. I just recently noticed that. Yeah. I was like, yeah, I'm obsessed with her. Yeah, she's so cool. Yeah, she's so cool. I love her. She's the president of road. Yeah, which is also so cool. We love strong women. Yeah. I feel like that is the total new era, by the way, of influence is somebody that has something outside of being a creator. It is such a double-edged storage to have so much stuff going on because for me, like not only my running, like this morning, my day is like I talked to three LP investors. Then I had to deal with my flood, obviously so it's a little different than I was like trying to film some content then I'm doing the podcast and so I feel like that is the new era of influence where it has somebody that's doing

something outside of their job like a Lauren Ratner but it is so challenging like do you even find it's so hard to like make content and also run a tech company yeah I wish something's always got to give like I wish I could be so much better with content and sometimes like I'll get ready and I do my hair for the day because I don't always look like this when I'm working like sometimes it's totally different but like on a day that. that I get ready and I get showered and I feel like, okay, I look really pretty today. You're going to do content. Yeah.

And then like my day fills up with calls or people are after me in Slack and like the whole day's gone. I'm like, I didn't film anything. And then I'm like disappointed in myself because like I think content from a founder is really cool and I should be doing more. But it's really hard. I look at someone like, do you know Grace Beverly? No. She actually has an amazing podcast for people listening to this. It's called Working Hard or Hardly Working.

She runs like three companies. I was on her YouTube this morning. she's doing like obviously her podcast which is always in the top 50 podcast charts she's also creating like vlogs every single week she's doing like sit done i just don't know how people do it and i honestly feel like for me i used to have a lot more time because during the nights like i was single and i could just be really selfish with my time i do find when you are in a relationship and you're doing these big things like we're thinking about moving and like i'm just like when am i going to find the time for this It's exhausting.

What does a typical day look like for you that now has how big of a team do you have? Seven of us. So seven people. What is a typical day in your life? I try not to schedule any calls before 9 a.m., which I'm curious when you take calls or like if you have any boundaries around that. All day, every day when I can. But do you take like an 8 a.m call?

Never. Like unless I were like right now we're raising money. So I did this morning because it's just like I and I was also traveling Tuesday and Wednesday. I flew to New York and flew back within 24 hours. That was crazy. Yeah. Like that's what I'm saying is like,

My life is just so unpredictable right now that like if I have to do it, I will. But on a normal week, like I'm definitely not taking a call before 10 a.m. Okay. I try not to take calls before 9 a.m. I wake up between 5.30 and 6, do some sort of movement in the morning, walk the dog. Every morning when I walk, I talk to my mom on the phone. That's like my time to be able to catch up with her. And then I like always have to shower before work.

So like shower. And then by the time I'm like ready to go, it's 9 a.m. Every day is different in terms of calls. You know what I need to get better at is like time blocking days. to have call days and no call days. I do that. Because it is crazy. You will think like, oh, my week's not that bad. I'm going to have time for creativity or like think bigger picture. And then all of a sudden, like, the days just fill up and like the maximum time I'll have between calls is 30 minutes. I'm like, when do I eat lunch? When do I do anything?

Don't you feel like when you're a CEO or you manage people? Like you actually don't do anything that you need to get done during the day? And at like five or six o'clock, that's when you actually do work. Yes. Yes. By like four o'clock. Which means you have no life. I have no life. I have no life. I like trying, I'm trying to be better about like having a life with my husband right now because it's just hard. Yeah. But like, yeah. Because you're how many years into building locker? I'm almost at five. And I think that's like such an important point is that there's, and Courtney said this in the last episode. Like there are different times in your life where like you have to sacrifice other parts. And it's like when you're in your first even like three to four years of like getting your team set up and understanding like what your product market fit is. Like it's just a time to really sacrifice a lot else. And focus on your business, but now it sounds like you're in a season where you're like, you just hired a head of engineering, like you now need to also focus on other parts of your

life. Do you feel like a push and pull all the time? I definitely am still confused as to like how much I can lean into my life versus like lean out of the business, not leaning out of the business, but like having a more regular life because I definitely don't have a regular life. I'm still constantly building, if that makes sense. I mean like candidly, I'm 32. I'm going to be 33 this year. And while I think that women can have babies at any age that they want, I still think about that as like, I really just want to understand for myself what is important to me. And I don't want to have any regrets in terms of building the business and building my life. So I'm not there yet, but I'm like thinking about how to like build my life around it.

It's such an important conversation that I feel like people are starting to have where I think we came from an era, especially with you and I both being the same age. Like when I was 25 to 30, I think it was the era of like run through walls, sacrifice everything to like have this independence and like build a business that you're proud of and have something that like is yours. And I think now there's so many females in our positions that are like, that's not all that we want though. And like I remember saying this to my therapist.

Like my worst nightmare is working so hard because I used to be like that. Like I would sacrifice everything for my career. for my job and to be somebody and have these like huge aspirations. And I think I got to the point where I was like, my worst fear is literally waking up at 45 with all of the money in the world and having nobody to share that with. Like that, the idea of that breaks my heart. But I feel like for some reason, if women have that conversation where they're like, my job isn't everything and like, I still want to be successful, but like have a life outside of work, it almost like will hurt you when you go to fundraise or will make people judge you like, oh, well, you don't sacrifice everything

for your business. Like, do you feel that, I guess you said you are confused about that. How do you ration that in your head to make it make sense? I mean, I think I'm having the same fear as you or that you were having. It would be my worst nightmare to have sacrificed, whether it's like me having children and my parents not being around for that. Yeah, I guess really for me, it's like my parents age and them not being around for it. How old are your parents?

they're going to be 70 this year. So they're not super old. And my parents are very young 70. But I can't fathom sacrificing their experience as grandchildren and my children's experience with them. And so for me, yeah, I don't want to wake up and regret that I, like, waited because I was building this business and I was too busy to think about it. When I'm in reality, I think I can do both and I think I could do both really well.

It's just a matter of like the external perception of it that I'm, that's where I'm grappling. And I think it's like so interesting is one of the things that I've heard from a lot of really successful female mother, entrepreneurs, investor, CEOs, is that they feel like a child gives them purpose. Like they, my sister has such great boundaries from like the hours of five o'clock until 8.30 p.m. at night.

Like she is completely unavailable Eastern Standard Time. I'll still text her a million times and she will literally not open it till she's done with her child because she's like, that is my purpose of being here. And it's still, she is still working from 8.30 at night until whenever the job, is done and it's like it's not as if you can just be like one day like oh i'm done with this and whatever you still have that grind inside of you but i think it what i've heard at least from a lot of moms is that

it does give you a lot of purpose and a lot of like just reason outside of work to disconnect because i still feel when i'm off or trying to take a weekend like i'm still working 24-7 are you always yeah so to get locker to that place you've been building it for five years like walk us through the progression of like when you started to where you got where you are today yeah so i started to where you're Started it by myself, I just was like, had the idea in my head, started sketching locker on a piece of paper, was like, this is the experience that I want as a consumer and like, how can I build it? Hired two independent contractor engineers who were still in college.

And then after a couple years. How much was it, by the way? Do you remember? Like how much they cost? Yeah. Well, I put $225,000 of my own money into the business. And that was over two years. So you invested $250K of your own money to like get it off the ground, basically.

Yeah, $225 of my own money to get it off the ground for two years. you made that money from working at Goldman. Yeah, Goldman and then being a commercial real estate broker. Crazy. Yeah. And so I boot, yeah, the company was bootstrapped for that first two years. Getting our like first 10,000 users was a part of that money. And then in June of 2022, we raised our first million, which actually came from a user of the platform, which was insane. And you also went to college with her or no? I did. Okay. She was a year younger than me. And I think that's what people, like, they're always like, how do I find investors? Or like, what do I do? And I'm like, your network. Literally everything that you did. Like, I,

always say the first best step is like literally drawing it out on paper like what is this actually going to be and then it's also just like leveraging your network and your uncompetitive advantage which to you was like the people that you went to school with one angel investor who just believed in the business wholeheartedly and was like I'm going to put a million in which was insane that allowed me to hire my first full-time employee which just changed what was your first employee an engineer okay we're a tech company yeah yeah so he came on and we completely redid the platform so like how people would experience soccer today started in 2022. We relaunched after hiring that engineer in November of 2022.

Yeah. And then since then, now there's seven employees for engineers, myself, ahead of marketing and a social media manager. And I think kind of like for the next phase and like how I'm thinking about 2025, so 2024 for us, what was really important to me was like our revenue strategy. How can I monetize them and how sustainable is that monetization, monetization strategy? we were extremely successful at that in 2024. So for me, 2025 is like growth on the team side and the user's side.

So like if we can grow our users, that means we can grow our revenue because that strategy is like locked down. But the team also needs to grow. Like I've been so cognizant about how we've spent money as a company. Obviously with my background being in finance, I'm like every dollar, what's our return on it? How does that work? But now I want to hire the right people to build the best product.

and there's so much that we want to do. We just need more people. So we're currently recruiting for a few more engineers as well. There's so many things I want to say to all of this. But I think one thing that you said that's so interesting is, one, starting with, like, having one objective for the year. Do you guys do a former, like, OKR or KPI process? Yeah, we do like a road.

It's like a road mapping process and you break it down by quarter with like kind of these big overarching year goals. So same thing for us. We actually do. And we just set this up like honestly at the beginning of, or at the end of 2024, going into 2025 because I think for me I was like similar actually to locker like I think about hs are like a tech company where it's like okay like we are doing what a r like how many like

followers we have I would think about that as users and so I think for me it was going from like a devoted niche to an engaged mass and I think for me for so long having this like tight net community was so important because it was like I would rather have a thousand true fans than have like a hundred thousand people that literally don't care about you I think that's actually one of the reasons we actually help each other so much with what we do because it's like yes we have a formal relationship as an advisor and as an investor to locker but beyond that I think our communities and like the foundation of hsr and locker actually so fundamentally similar because there's like a shared mission so the way that I thought about hsr going into this year was like how can I go from like a devoted niche to an

engaged mass which means like acquiring more followers or users as you could say and that's why even the podcast became such a priority for me because I had been putting it off for so long being like, things are going great, like, why rock the boat type of thing? But it's like for us to actually be able to deliver true value for people. It's like we needed to make a change. What are some of the ways that you're making a change this year to like grow the business in terms of users? And what else? Did you say users and what?

Team. And team. Yeah, on the user side. So I think it's two different ways that we're thinking about it. One is product-led growth, which is always going to be our best and most sustainable growth strategy. So like what can we build into the product that's going to bring natural growth? And then the other side is like investing in paid.

We've done no paid advertising today, which is incredible, but also like incredible businesses also do paid advertising and like find their niches and from there like, you know, invest in what's working really well. So we haven't even tested that. So we don't even know if we put paid behind something like how can we skyrocket that growth and then like find what's working and like double down on that. So I think that's what we're really focused on doing is find what works for us. You have 200,000 users now.

And what is your KAC? It's like 20 cents. 20 cents. Yeah. So how did you go and acquire those users? Like for somebody that's listening that wants to build a tech company, what are the strategies and the channels that actually work and convert to get you 200,000 users with a 20 cent cac? Yeah.

I think for us, it's all been about community. So word of mouth, how can you build a product that people are so excited about that they just want to talk about it on social media? And then we also, like, there have been some product things. We built the locker shopping club. M.G. when she joined the team built out the locker. or shopping club, which is essentially our internal referral program. People can invite their friends and they earn cash rewards by doing that.

And I think that's one of the really important things to me and what I would tell other founders to do too is like there's two different ways to reward your customers. You can do it up front. So like there are apps that would pay you $50 to join now. And then you can do it on the backside. And my opinion has always been to do it on the backside. Bring in these people who are natural users of your product. Get them to love it.

And then reward them for being here and like keep keep them. happy versus if you bring someone in giving them money up front. Like an influencer. Maybe not even an influencer, but like let's say we gave people $50 to sign up for locker. Which one of my portfolio companies has done. And it's like so evident between the difference of community that you have versus them, which is so hard to figure out because I will say like from a product perspective,

functionally, the tool I'm thinking of actually does make so much sense. And like I personally love it. And I just like struggle with like, why is that not working? for them to lead with product-led growth versus like they do have to offer customers $50 to acquire them. Yeah. I mean, I think it's what the way that I always think about when you offer money up front is you're going to reach a much bigger audience, but they're not your right audience. And so they're not going to stick around for as long as you would want them to because yeah, of course, it's easy to get me. I want $50. I want $50. Like, give me $50. I'll take and I'll use anything for $50 up front.

but maybe I didn't actually want it or I wasn't actually ready for it or it's not the right product for me. And so now you've spent money acquiring this user who's not your actual user. And so I want to build ways. Like we launched our payback program, which is essentially if I buy something out of my own locker, I can make cash back. Or if I buy something out of your locker, I make cash back and you make commission. And that to me is such a clear way of building product-led growth where people come into the product, they use it, they save something, they buy something. That's like the full life cycle of a use. and then I'm like, here's some money and come back and do it again and do it again and do it again.

And so we'll invest very heavily in that. But I think having product-led growth, you also have to have like an awareness campaign because people have to know about payback. And you haven't done the awareness campaigns successfully yet. We haven't even tried them. Yeah. But you did when you first started. I remember like you don't have to say the influencers name, but I remember when you first like

actually got your first million and you were coming to me being like, how do I spend this? And then you told me you did an influencer campaign with an influencer that's like a pretty no New York City influencer and it completely failed. Can you walk us through that campaign? Yeah, I've done a few influencer campaigns. Your face looked like you were going to kill me. You're like, oh, no. I was just like, that campaign was so sad, but you have to just be so confident in the influencer that you're working with. Like, for example, I'll talk through that campaign too, but for example, you want to work with people like you or there's an influencer right now that

we're obsessed with her. Hannah Lizzie is her. No, send me her. TikTok name. I'm obsessed with her. You want to work with people who like genuinely connect with their community. And so it's not just about the numbers. It's about like their actual relationship with their people. We've done like some crazy campaigns. I've never sent a ton of money on a campaign. Like it's not like I'm hurting over it, but I'm always just looking for the ROI on the campaign.

But my first campaign that I did that totally failed was just a complete misunderstanding of how much it cost. How much did it cost you and when was this? Okay. So the total cost was $8,000. In what year? I think this was 2022. 22. And how many followers did they have? I want to say like 150,000. Okay. That's a lot.

Okay. It was crazy. I thought I was getting three different story series. I got three frames for 8K. Total misunderstanding. I was totally not on the same page as them. And that's like my fault. I should have understood the like industry lingo better. But I got three story frames. So it took her 45 seconds of her life for 8,000. I was like, I'm in the wrong industry. Yeah. What am I doing? Although I will say on the flip side, like I just filmed my first story campaign where I spent like four hours actually creating the content and then like, no, not even just prepping.

That's like even not thinking through the storyboarding of it. That was like literally filming. And I think this is like my blessing and my curse and you're very like this too, is like I give everything a thousand percent. So even though it was like the lowest thing I've ever done. But like I love the product and I was honestly like this is such a cool message. Like I'm down. but like I was in Montana and I literally spent like four hours filming like this thing.

So it actually wasn't 45 seconds. But I said to the brand before we kick things off, I was like, I just want you to know like three story frames doesn't actually feel organic to me. Like I feel like I can get everything out in two. I'll lower the rates for you. It feels so inorganic for me to be posting like three frames around this product. Like I would rather put you in my newsletter. And I think that's like something where it is such an advantage.

to being a creator for me because I actually know the other side completely as well too. And I'm like, I actually know what's going to convert for you and like know where there's going to be value for the brand. And I think so many influencers that I know see a check and see like a one time opportunity. Whereas like our strategy with brand partners is like let's do such a great job and deliver so much that like there's like next year there's recurring revenue that's going to come in already because like we actually have delivered value for this customer. Of course.

The influencers that work for your company, like are they micro, are they macro? Like, who's converting? One, we don't work with a ton of influencers. The influencers we do work with are ones that, like, I genuinely discovered on social media was engaged in their content and was like, okay, I think that they're incredible at their job and I want to work with them. The biggest influencer we work with is like 150,000 followers. From there, one we've only worked with like one influencer so far even in 2025.

Oh, no, two influencers so far in 2025. Oh, no, two influencers so far in 2025. Other than that, like, it's all community. Like, we run challenges. Brands will pay us to run challenges, and we have our audience go out and, like, enter these challenges. And, like, we get organic content from that. And that's, like, what performs better for us.

One of the questions I got recently in a Q&A was, like, how do you build community online with, like, starting from zero or with, like, not that many resources? And I think if there's one person who has done that the best ever, it's you guys. I honestly think of, like, locker shopping clubs. on the same level as like the bumblebee program that rolled out when it was first launching, what would you say to answer that person's question for their company? Like, how did you build such a crazy community for Locker where people want to buy merge from like

a tech company? I think it's like authenticity. I would say it's no different than HSR. It's like being relatable to the community that you're building around. So for example, if you think about some of Lockers competitors that have like come and gone in the past, they were built by like middle aged men, which like nothing against middle men, but like the people who want to use a platform like locker want to see somebody like me and be like, I can be like her too. I want to be inspired by her. I want to build a business. I want to be a

part of this ecosystem. So I think it's like being really authentic. Helps you build your community. I mean, that's why people are so drawn to you. They see you and they're like, I want to be in her aura. I want to be just like her. I want to build a business like her and I want to learn from her. And so everything we've done has been so oriented around the community and like building up the community. I think that also makes people really happy is like when we invest money, we invest it back into the community and that makes people feel seen. Well, because it's like even what's going on with the poppy versus allie pop backlash right now, right? Like that is such a great example of a brand that has built themselves on community. And now the community feels like they have been betrayed by this brand.

And it's interesting because I see both sides. And that's like honestly my problem being such an empath is like, yes, like you can never forget the people that got you there, but you also do have to appeal to a wider group. And I think it's like you can't be everything for everybody. And one of the things you made very clear from the beginning of Locker was like you were for the community. Do you feel like you've alienated the influencer crowd because of that? And they're going to brands or platforms like shop my and like to know it because you just have

not given into the influencer culture? I wouldn't say that we've like alienated them on our like by our own doing. I would say that for influencers, there are platforms that are going to offer them higher levels of monetization. And so naturally from a business perspective, they're going to gravitate towards them more in terms of us giving away a percentage of our commission. We've had to be more thoughtful as to how much we give away.

And we can always build that up in the future as to how much we give away. But right now, because we're serving the community, so people who haven't had access to getting this kind of money back or commission before, we're able to just treat it a little bit differently. So I hope we haven't alienated the influencer community. I think that they just naturally are going to gravitate towards tools that are like specifically built for them. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette.

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there will become that there will come a time like a poppy where you're so built on the community. And then it's like when you do reach the mass that like you do have to change certain things around. Or do you think that the core underlying thesis of locker is to like have this democratization where everybody can be making money on sharing that like that will never really be a concern for you? I mean, I guess at this point, I don't have a crystal ball to see what that's going to look like. But what my gut tells me and like everything we've built for this business has been around community. and the democratization for everybody. So I don't envision us having to like switch our narrative

to being built for somebody else. What do you think about the poppy drama? I mean, because I'm so community driven, like I totally get it. What do you think that they should have done instead of sending the vending machines to the 25 influencers? Like, what would you have wanted to see them do? Well, I think I saw this one TikTok of a creator

who got offered one of the vending machines and she came on and she like declined it because I think she wasn't going to be home or something. and she like came back on and she was like instead of giving it to me like could you bring it to like the hospital in my town and so like it could have in my opinion what could have been really cool is like work with influencers to find a place that's for the community and do it collaboratively with the influencer in their town so like let the influencer pick what's like a really amazing park or like facility whether it's an old folks home or a hospital or like something that meant something

to them to them and bring that and have the influencer like engage with the vending machine in that context because I think it would have had like better longevity. It's even something that I'm doing like right now I actually turned down a lot of PR yesterday because I'm so behind on posting. I've been gone for like a month. I have literally an entire stack of stuff in my room. I had just donated everything that I had in my apartment when the four girls had moved in here like literally like road like YSL like everything that I left for them. how crazy that one of the girls who stayed here has been a locker user for like four years. She was actually one of the first locker users. Hi, CF, if you're listening to this, I'm obsessed

with you. She actually just launched her mixtape called The Hughes. I love her. Everyone goes stream it. CF Bolton. And she has an amazing mixtape called The Hughes. I left them like every single piece of influencer PR that I had. I've gotten so much more over the last month. I'm like, I do feel this sense of like wanting to post it because here's what happened to me when I was launching my collab with nude sticks, I reached out to like 25 girls that like I would say I'm on at least good friendly terms with and most of them that accepted them, obviously I thought the expectation, not even like the expectation. I just thought that they would post it because I thought we were friendly.

And it was like a little, obviously I get it because I'm on the other side now where like a small business has actually reached out to me for Valentine's Day and like I, between New York and the floods and everything, like I just haven't had the time to post it. I have to say, like, when you are on the other side, and this is what's so great about me being able to sit as like an investor, a founder and a creator is like, I see everything. It is so disappointing for an emerging brand when you spend so much time and so much money putting a PR package together and you don't see them post it, but like then you see them post from their dream brand the next day. And again, it's business. It's not personal. But I think there's just so many things that I've learned about influencer marketing by being able to see both sides. And so that's where like on the one hand with the poppy stuff, I completely agree, especially as two people that like want to give back so much. But on the other side, I'm like, they are executing an $8 million Super Bowl commercial. Like they do need to drum up business and awareness.

And influencer marketing is a huge part of that. Like that's where eyeballs are. People buy from people. They don't buy from brands anymore. Totally. Do you feel like this year you want to start working with influencers more? or where are you going to be like spending growth marketing to grow your user base? I mean, influencers definitely still like something I'm super bullish on.

I think it's finding the right influencers building long-term relationships with them. I think that's more impactful too because, for example, with a company like Locker and influencer campaign is not going to be successful for us if they post about Locker today and another influencer platform tomorrow. So I think it's like building really great long-term relationships with influencers where it fits really naturally into their life. Like an industry, I think that's also really interesting is we're starting to think about, like,

actually, like, working with shows and they're buyers. So, like, they have to buy things for cast members. So figuring out how we can... What do you mean shows? Like TV shows? And they have to, like, they buy a ton of clothes for each cast member to, like, build their closet. So, like, figuring out other areas that we can...

Do you mean, like, a summer house? It could be, like, a summer house, but or even, like, the voice or, like... Okay, but, like, reality TV. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Or, I mean, it doesn't even have to be reality TV. It's anything that's like a costume, like, buyer. It feels like you make so many big decisions. Like, even though you're talking, it's like you're just making so many decisions this year that are like big girl decisions, I always say. As an anxious person, do you feel like it's harder to make those decisions? I think when you get to a point where you need it so badly, the decision making process becomes much clearer and much easier. So like the confidence around decision making is easier for me, or I'm just, just like, I need this. I know I need this. This is the right thing for the business. I'm

going to spend money here. I think I've spent, obviously, I've been doing this for five years. Now I think I've sent so many years, like, maybe second guessing or being less sure of myself that I've become much more confident in my ability to, like, execute on my decision making. I feel the same thing. Like, I, it's so interesting because I don't actually love, even though I'm a very direct person, I actually don't love, what's the right word I'm looking for, not like confrontation. I don't like delivering bad news. I'm a people pleaser. Same. But when it comes down to like, this is my livelihood or, like this is the make or break to something, it is so much easier to just make a decision and go with

it. For a founder that's listening to this, that is trying to make some big decisions this year, but doesn't have maybe like the network or the advisor group that you have, like, what would you suggest that they do to make sure that they know they're on the right path? I think they should just create like essentially like a decision-making checklist that makes them feel really confident, whether that's like go on a walk, clear their head, think about it for as long as they feel like they need to. But ultimately, you can only get an answer if you make a decision quickly. So make a decision, analyze your decision, and move on. Christine, Elizabeth Locker, Pluger. Thank you so much for coming on. I love you so much. Thank you. I love you. You're going to have to come

back when the cameras are working because they're dying. Bye. M-a.