Estimated reading time: 7 Min
Rosario Hoppenstedt and Priscilla Soler teamed up to bring women from Mexico - and we hope very soon from the rest of the world - a healthy and natural product whose sole objective is to help them live a full and happy life: HoliHerb.
A supplement created specifically to help women achieve hormonal balance, without having to resort to the synthetic hormones that are so often prescribed with birth control pills. The results? Well, in addition to healthier and happier women, the two friends can also be extremely proud of having helped more than one baby come into the world. A feat that few brands can claim.
But his commitment to bring this natural compound produced in Mexico to the market had a scalability problem: Rosario managed the packages by hand, one by one. However, one day they discovered Cubbo and now they are considering conquering the global market. This is their story!
Frank: How was HoliHerb born?
Rosario: I have a friend, Priscila, who studied holistic nutrition and was anxious to release a line of good quality dietary supplements at a good price. So I decided to get into the project, she was in charge of sales and development and I was in charge of the operational area and administration of the company.
Frank: Were they born in the midst of the Covid crisis?
Rosary: Yes. In the midst of a crisis.
Frank: What exactly is HoliHerb?
Rosary: It is a natural dietary supplement for women's hormonal balance. Right now, most solutions for women's hormonal problems come about because a doctor starts giving them birth control pills, which are synthetic hormones. This does not solve a woman's problem of hormonal imbalance. It's like a band-aid. That's why we decided to bet on a solution that addresses the problem from the root. That's what we do with Holiherb, we seek to help women naturally balance their hormones without putting on the synthetic hormone patch or band-aid.
The idea is that your body is able to create the indicated hormones in the indicated quantities, and this in turn provides many benefits because it helps to improve fertility, stabilizes hormonal imbalances and improves the symptoms that result from them, solves the problem of insulin resistance, etc. It is helping your body to work naturally and optimally.
Also read: Bioflora, probiotic champions in Mexico
Frank: Is this product entirely natural?
Rosary: Yes. The active ingredient is an ingredient found in fruits and vegetables, Myo-Inositol. But in quantities like those we use, it has functions that are more therapeutic.
Frank: Were you born as ecommerce?
Rosary: It's all been online. We have about five distributors in the country, and they are the only physical stores. But for the rest, everything is through ecommerce
We started pre-sales in ecommerce in February of 2020 and by March of 2020 we were already operating. From the beginning, we started distributing throughout Mexico.
Frank: I see that in the packs included in the store, they also offer other accessories
Rosary: Yes, that's right. To complement the supplement, we have other products that are not made by us, but with which we have partnered and that help complete treatments. Especially vitamin D and probiotics.
Frank: Did people have to educate a lot, was it difficult for them to enter the Mexican market?
Rosary: My friend Priscilla is an Instagram influencer on nutrition issues and with her account @Gastrawnomica we have been able to communicate to the Mexican market what Holiherb is and what we want it to be.
It hasn't been very difficult to find a market because we were already immersed in the community of people who are interested in this topic and in this product. If it's true that once we launched, we had to dedicate ourselves to getting more followers, promoting word of mouth and maintaining and improving product quality. And well, on the Holiherb page we also have a section where we show the product, the components and benefits, etc.
Frank: What platform is ecommerce built on?
Rosary: We have the store built on Woocommerce.
Frank: And do they sell on the marketplace too?
Rosary: Yes. We sell on Amazon.
Frank: Do you dare to tell us a testimonial or a story from a customer who changed her life with HoliHerb?
Rosary: Oh, we have a thousand testimonies. Above all, the prettiest are women who have been looking for a pregnancy for years and couldn't, and after a few months of taking HoliHerb they were able to achieve a pregnancy. That's why this year we started to register the births of “HoliHerb” babies and it's very satisfying.
Climbing to Succeed with Cubbo
One of the big problems common to any successful venture is scalability. This is what separates, in many cases, a good business idea from a good one. Because, what's the use of having a super product if you're not able to sell more than ten units a day? Scaling, being able to sell massively, is key to the survival of any online business.
Cubbo jumped in with HoliHerb precisely to solve this problem. And it was Rosario, who hand-packed each of the brand's orders, who opted for a professional solution that would allow them to grow with quality and allow them to spend their time on things that were truly profitable for HoliHerb.
Frank: At what point do they find Cubbo?
Rosary: We had been operating for about six months and a friend of mine who sold toys for children told me that she had used Cubbo to solve all the deliveries and I found it incredible because it was just what I was looking for.
In the beginning, when we launched, I was the one who had to physically make each box, each shipping guide, keep track of the packages and confirm their arrival. This was too time consuming and required my presence in Mexico City on an ongoing basis. I couldn't leave Mexico City for many days because then the orders didn't come out, anyway.
When I Heard About Cubbo, I spoke to Sofía and I saw them as a customer, the truth is that it has been super good.
Frank: Was there anything that they asked Cubbo to be a mandatory condition to be able to work with them?
Rosary: Most of all, the good service. Order tracking, timely customer response, timely deliveries, adequate storage and shipping speed are very important to us.
Frank: What technical problems did you have when launching ecommerce?
Rosary: At first we had a company that we used for payments but it was very problematic, we had a lot of sales when we started and this company blocked our account. That's why we had to choose PayPal as an emergency and we stuck with them. Payments were an issue at first.
Frank: Was Cubbo your first experience with a logistics operator?
Rosary: Yes. I used to do the shipments. The truth is that it frees me up time and allows me to focus on the problems that the company has and on being able to develop the strategy for it to grow. That's worth a lot and that's why I think it was an excellent transition to move logistics to Cubbo.
Frank: Cubbo does the full fulfillment for them, right?
Rosary: Yes. It does all the fulfillment for us.
Also read: Nuda Est, great experiences through logistics and unboxing
Frank: For the next five years, what plans does HoliHerb have?
Rosary: We really want to sell in other countries. That is our goal this year. And it's a little complicated because being a dietary supplement issue, each country has to give health approval and it's complex. But we are in that process.
Frank: What advice would you give to an entrepreneur who wants to start creating an e-commerce in Mexico?
Rosary: I would tell him that he has to venture out to do it. Because if you wait for everything to be perfect, you're never going to be able to do it. When we launched we had a thousand details, the photos of the products for example, were not as we wanted. But we decided to launch ourselves, because if you don't, you'll never go on the market. I would tell them to launch, to see the reality of the market, and then to correct and learn.
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During 2021 in Cubbo:
* Our registered customers Savings of 21% in operating costs
* 97.1% of the products received, were processed and were ready to sell In 24 hours.
* We had a 99.7% shipping compliance
* We are registered at Precision in Order Preparation of 99.9875%, that is, 1 error for every 8,000 shipments.
* 60% of our deliveries in CDMX were made The Same Day
* We Carry Out Nationwide deliveries in 1.3 days Average
