Since committing to her bubble tea cup business full time six months ago, Jolynn Beh has secured licencing deals with Hello Kitty, and one of Australia’s biggest TikTok stars. Here’s how she did it.
If you’re targeting a certain demographic, like gen Z, hire people who are part of it.
When planning your cashflow, understand your variables and what can be tweaked while staying cash positive.
E-commerce is a tough sector right now. Make sure you understand the rising costs of customer acquisition and freight, and how they will affect your business in the medium term.
Find your local business community groups and ask questions. Chances are you’re not the first person to have that problem.
Jolynn Beh admits her bubble tea preference is a bit boring.
“Original milk tea. No sugar, no ice in winter. Sago pearls.”
The Perth-based founder of reusable bubble tea reusable cup startup, Bobbleware, grew up drinking bubble tea with her friends after school.
Now it’s her livelihood after leaving behind a banking role to commit herself to the business full time, right as interest in the drink picks up globally, and the ubiquitous single-use plastic cups the industry relies on are phased out for sustainability goals.
Her two-year-old startup manufactures and ships reusable bubble tea cups across the world, and Beh says the revenue for the business grew by 384% in the last financial year.
In total, the business has sold more than 25,000 units, according to Beh, who shared how the company successfully markets to younger audiences, and built partnerships quickly.
Her husband, Edison Soh, also works as part of the business, and is a trained engineer.
The only other hire the company has made is in the marketing team, a gen Z former customer named Cassie who was a brand advocate before landing the full time role.
“The first staff we brought on board was to appoint someone who is from that demographic,” Beh said.
“We can better understand gen Z and speak to their needs.”
While a majority of Bobbleware’s customers are millennials — like Beh — she says she can now see the shift on their database towards gen Z as they find themselves with more cash to spend.
Cassie helped Bobbleware reach out to Hannah Balanay, better known as ‘thexhan’ on TikTok, a gen Z creator with 18 million followers on the platform, who also hails from Perth.
Beh says they leant on them both being Perth-based to start the conversation, and Balanay’s worldwide audience is helping them reach new customers overseas.
It started with a simple question: “Do you like drinking bubble tea?”, and led to Bobbleware designing a custom-printed bottle sold by Belaney directly to her follower base.
The anime-inspired streetscape design was created to match the TikTok star’s aesthetic, and she gets a proportion of the products for each bottle sold.
@thexhanpearls>>>>>♬ i juh cop by xinai on soundcloud – xinai
It’s not the only high-profile partnership the startup has secured. In the coming months, Bobbleware will be releasing cups in partnership with Japanese conglomerate Sanrio, the owners of Hello Kitty.
Beh says they targeted Sanrio after analysing their audience, believing the company’s iconic character made sense as a first licensing deal.
Having worked in banking with small business clients, Beh had a better headstart than most on the finance side, understanding how to forecast results and model them.
“The skills from banking and finance are definitely transferable,” Beh said.
“I spent most of my time in business banking, so the curious part of me got to see how different businesses operated.”
She says she had seen the ‘darker, less glorious’ side of e-commerce, away from the big headlines of outrageous growth rates.
“You often hear the top line numbers, but they don’t tell you how much they burn,” she said.
For Beh, understanding the variable inputs, and how much they can shift without your bottom line being affected is crucial to keeping her business sustainable.
She listed the rising cost of advertising, cost to acquire new customers on digital platforms, increased freight costs, and Australia Post price rises all make e-commerce a tougher gig than it was just a couple of years ago.
“In some ways it’s controlled by you, as a business owner you can manage, but you need to know the metrics,” Beh said.
“That’s why the direction we take is more omni-channel. We’re trying to grow online and offline at the same time.”
Part of that includes selling branded cups directly to bubble-tea vendors, especially in advance of state and federal bans on single-use plastics.
Bubble tea is notorious for the amount of single use-plastic required. It is usually served with big tapioca pearls — the ‘bubbles’ — too thick to be consumed through a regular straw, which is why many vendors have specialised equipment for lids and straws.
For some, that includes automated machinery which uses heat seals for the lids, keeping them water tight and safe to travel with.
That convenience is now seen as wasteful by consumers, and governments, meaning longer-term solutions like Bobbleware are essential.
“One of the bubble tea owners was saying they went to their suppliers, and they had nothing,” Beh said.
The company is just about to finish its Plus Eight Accelerator program, and will be raising capital next.
As WA brings forward its plastic ban, Bobbleware is in the right place at the right time, and Beh is still adjusting to being a business owner full time.
“It’s very surreal. It’s very daunting. It’s the biggest decision I’ve ever had to make in my life,” Beh said.
“I had a cushy lifestyle, stable job, stable income, now I’m trying to keep hustling.
“It’s different, but rewarding.”
Paul Brescia is a freelance journalist and regular contributor to SmartCompany Plus. You can follow him on twitter: @pwbrescia
