Perfume Vending Machine Webinar Recording

With the recording. So, by way of background, my name is Chris Kerner. I live here in Dallas, Texas. I'm a serial entrepreneur. I love business and I have a podcast and YouTube channel, and we own a bunch of businesses. And I have been importing things from other countries for 16 years now, since I was 22 years old. Maybe it's iPhone parts, iPhone accessories, bitcoin miners, perfume machines, bounce houses, trampolines, you name it. I've imported a lot of different things and I enjoy it. I love business. And so I'm grateful for this opportunity that we have to help import these wonderful perfume vending machines. My business partner is Nick Hulesky. He might be in here right now, he might not. And we have a company called Co Founders that owns and starts companies much like this one. The owner of the perfume vending machine company is called Perfumatic, and they are an amazing company out of Spain. And we are the authorized distributor for North America and for everyone that's tuning in, that's international. I will get to that later. So for now, I want to talk about the machine. I know a lot of you are curious about pricing. I know a lot of you are curious about profit potential. So I'm going to cover all that. There is no question that's off limits. And if it is off limits, it's not off limits. So you were probably here because you saw a viral video on Instagram with this. This ugly mug on it. And when I posted that video, I had no idea what would happen. I post videos about business ideas all the time. Now, I did have somewhat of a relationship with Perfumatic because we had spoken three months ago about me buying a bunch of their machines, because I genuinely think this is an awesome idea, regardless of what country you're in. And so this idea had always just been kind of sitting in my mind. And then one day I'm. I was recording my podcast with Nick and I brought up the idea because we never really talked about it. And then I made the Instagram video to talk about the idea to promote the podcast, not to promote the machines. And then the video went viral. And then I started talking to Perfumatic again, and they said, let's work something out. Let's make something more official, because coincidentally, Chris, you have a lot of experience doing this type of thing. Not with perfume. I have no experience with perfume, and I won't pretend that I do, but in business and in commerce and even a little vending machine experience. So that's why you're here. From that viral Video. That's why I'm here. I didn't know I would be here last week, but here, here we are. And so let's roll with it. I. Let's just get straight to, to the brass tack. So Perfumatic has sold thousands of these machines from across the world. North America is a fairly new market to them and I'm proud and excited and honored to be authorized to distribute once again. We'll get to the international questions in a little bit, but These machines hold five bottles of perfume or cologne and there it holds 30 milliliters per bottle. And you are able to charge per spray whatever you like. The average charge is a dollar. At more high end nightclubs it goes up to 250. The profit potential of these machines is pretty incredible. The, the payback period is largely based on the location and the volume of course. Right. And so if you put this machine in the middle of nowhere, your payback period might be a long time. But if you put it in a hot location such as a nightclub, a gym, university campus, a nicer gas station, believe it or not, movie theaters, then the, the profit potential is between anywhere from 7 to $900 USD per month to thousands of dollars per month. Which means that the payback period, as in when you can get your investment back out, ranges from a month or even less than a month if it's a really good location, to three or four months if it's a bad location, it could be five, six, seven, eight plus months. If it's an amazing location. You find lightning in a bottle, it could be a few weeks. Their best performing location receives 7,000 sprays a month. I assume they're charging a dollar, so that's $7,000 a month. Fairly passively. These bottles take about five to seven minutes to refill. They last a long time, and the warranty on these machines is good for two years or a hundred thousand sprays, whichever comes first. So I haven't even really referred to my notes, so let me go to my notes and, and see what I'm missing. So these cards, these machines accept either card paper, cash or coin. The price varies somewhat based on what you prefer. They also have a free version of the machine for perfume companies that just want to use it for samples and don't want to charge or for people that rent out the entire machine to festivals, events or weddings and they just want to charge a flat fee to for someone to have the whole machine for a day. You don't really need a credit card terminal in that case, so you can get credit card, coin or paper. And the the locations where these machines work best largely vary on the culture and the country. So what we've seen in Scandinavia, for instance, they work really well at universities on campus because college students want to smell good. In Eastern Europe we see that it's more common for women to use the machines, so they do better in places where women are. In Western Europe it's more common for men to use the machines. So they do really well in nightclubs. In Croatia, they do really well in high end, nicer gas stations, movie theaters, gyms. And I would bet that there are hundreds of potential types of locations that haven't even been discovered yet. Because this is a relatively young company and there's a zillion different places where you could put these. And I think a little creativity would go a long way here. These machines do take 60 days to produce. From the time you order. Whether you order 1, 10 or 100, it will take 60 days. 70% of the deposit is required up front and then 30% before delivery is required. The price of the machines, it starts around 3000 USD. That can go up based on the payment options that you want. Adding a credit card terminal costs a little bit more. But the price of the machines at $3,000 comes down as you order more quantities. So it's around 3000 USD for 1 to 5 units. As you scale up 6 plus 10 plus 100 plus that price can drop. The price also does not include shipping taxes or customs charges. So that gets that question out of the way. Got a couple questions in the comments. So you are able to customize the machines. If you order five plus units, from one to four units, you're not able to customize them. The machine does come with a answer. An LCD screen with a like a default advertisement for the perfume machine, you are able to switch that out with whatever you want. Maybe your own ad, your own logo, your own video or what some customers are doing. They're even selling ads on this machine as an additional revenue source, so you're able to do that as well. And all of the machines come with the video screen. That's not an additional cost. You are able to offer free samples on the machine. So if you you'd like people to be able to try before you buy. These machines are equipped with a GSM or a CDMA SIM card which can make import importing them kind of tricky sometimes if you don't know what you're doing. Perfumatic does own the patent on this machine, so others that might Be selling something that looks similar, are violating that patent, and you are at risk of interfering with local laws. Because if a device has a GSM or a CDMA SIM card inside of it, which these do, they can be classified as a communications device, which is an entirely different ball game than merely a vending machine. So let me go back to my notes here. Just to recap. For people that have joined late, the price is around $3,000, which does not include additional payment options on the machine or shipping or local taxes. That price goes down as you add more quantities. Customization is available at five plus units. Profit potential is anywhere between 7,800usd per month to 7,000 per month. On an extreme case, most people find that they're profiting between 720500 per month, which would mean your payback period is call it one to three, four months, which is, that's a, it's a pretty good investment in my opinion. Let me get to some of the, some of the questions here. I'm scrolling. All right, let's see. Man, so many people putting branding on the machine. I just answered that. Thank you. Bahamas. Okay. Power. So the machine, it is hardwired, I believe, I'm almost positive it is hardwired into the power. So you would need an electrician to do that. And it only costs like. Depends widely on what your local power costs are. But the power costs per month are like two to eight dollars. It's very, very, very small. But it, the power is configured to work worldwide. It doesn't have to be a specific plug. How many sprays do you get per 30 milliliters? Great question. I have that in my notes. I believe that. Matt, you might need to correct me. I believe that's 250 to 300 sprays. Okay. That's what I have in my notes. So you would only have to refill it. You know, 300 sprays times five bottles in there. Of course, it depends on which bottles are most popular. So the more you refill it means the more money you're making. Payment possible with credit, debit card only, Cash, coin, cash or credit slash debit card, all available. In your experience in a nightclub, for example, would the owner typically charge you rent to keep the device in their establishment? Great question. So I completely forgot to talk about the reporting capabilities. So you are able to see and track from iOS or Android the status, the sales, the levels of your perfume, the or cologne from your phone at any given time or moment. So what that means is you are able to negotiate whatever you can negotiate with the building or business establishment owner. Maybe that's a flat $100 per month. Maybe it's a profit share of 10, 20 or 30%. And you say, hey, I'm going to add you as a user to the back end of our software. So you don't need to worry about trusting me. You can have full visibility into what that machine is putting out and I'll give you 20% of it. You're able to do either or. What we're seeing is it's a good mix. Maybe 60, 40, 60% of people are opting for like a percentage revenue share, 10 to 20%, and then 40% are getting a small dollar amount per month. But ultimately this is a sales pitch. And a lot of this depends on how you approach the business owner for you. For instance, Tesla has thousands of superchargers all over the world and when they approach a business owner, they say, we're not going to give you any of this. They might be paying 10 cents per kilowatt hour and then charging the Tesla owner 40 cents per kilowatt hour. Right? So a four times markup and the, the person that owns that parking lot gets nothing. They get absolutely nothing from that. No dollars, no percentage, nothing. It all goes to Tesla. Tesla's pitches. We will bring you more traffic. People will go inside your building and spend more money with you. And over time, that's proven to actually be true. And they can point to, to data, data points that proves that out. So if you approach the business owner with the attitude of like, hey, like, do you think maybe it's possible, like I'll, I'll share the profits with you, then that's definitely not as high leverage of a conversation of approaching him and saying, listen, I actually the, Today's your lucky day. I want to bring you a lot more customers today. You own this movie theater. I own this thing that attracts people to a movie theater. If they smell good in your movie theater, they'll want to be in your movie theater. If someone has to choose between a movie theater where they can smell good or a movie theater that requires them to spend $70 on a bottle of cologne that they only use once every time they go to the movies, they're going to choose yours, right? You just have to attack them up front with this logic. And then when you hit them with the pitch, it's, listen, so how would you feel about me placing this in your movie theater? What do you have to lose? Not, hey, so how about I give you $200 a month to put this in your movie theater, it just changes the whole dynamic of the conversation. You're the one with the knowledge, you're the one approaching them. So you should be the one to frame it in the way that's most advantageous for you. What is the average share? Okay, I just answered that. Great question. I agree. Rudy, what's the security of the machine like? What materials are used to prevent theft? I have that information. Let me grab that. That is a great question. Give me just a second. So let me just give you some, like, facts about the machine. It has a 3G or a 4G modem. It also has WI fi capabilities. It has a lock for anti vandalism. It has. You can get an anti vandal housing material. You can get plexiglass glass. They have all types of additional options. Obviously, some locations might be more dangerous than others. So that option is up to you as to how many anti theft or anti vandal protections you would like on the machine. But they are available? Yes. The. The HD screen is 10.1 inches. It's an LED screen. I said LCD. And I said 300 sprays per bottle. That is incorrect. The. You have the display bottles, the retail bottles that people actually see, those hold 300 or 250 to 300 sprays. But then there's like a wholesale bottle beneath that the customer can't see that holds like a thousand more. And so I believe I could be wrong. If I'm wrong, I'll send a retraction in a correction. But that it holds. The machine holds 1500 sprays before you have to refill it. Electricity bill, two to ten dollars per month. You can integrate it with several payment systems and you can operate it remotely. You can get daily reports and statistics. Does the machine come with any sort of system data analytics to gauge spray count? Yep. Okay, thank you. I answered that. Can you change the language? Yes. You can actually have two different languages at the same time as well. They support all the major languages. And then you can have two at any given time. Physical dimensions of the machine. Great question. Let me grab that. It is 700 by 400 millimeters length and width and 185 millimeters deep. So convert millimeters. 700 by 400 by 185 and empty with no perfume. It weighs 24 kilograms, which in pounds is like 52 pounds or so. So 52 pounds, 70 by 4. 700 by 400 by 185 millimeters. How do you maintain these machines such as cleaning, refilling, servicing? Great question. So repairs are. They do happen, but they're not common whatsoever. They're somewhat straightforward machines. There is a repair manual. It financially doesn't usually make sense to ship these all over the country and world to get them repaired. And so there is a generic repair manual for the most common things. For something more complex, you would be able to get on the phone with the manufacturer and have them talk you through it. For something more complex than that, you would be able to ship it if needs be. What are examples of how you could customize the machine? I will send some of those afterwards because I don't have that offhand power consumption. What are some breaks? The glass voltage of the machine. Let me see what that is. That's a good question. I don't have that, but I will send that afterwards. But I'm imagining since it draws such low power, it would be 110. How would manager store owners be paid for placing machines? Okay, answered that. Insurance and maintenance. Answered that insurance that would probably be covered. It's typically covered under the establishment where you have the machine. What challenges do you think one would have in the us? Great question, David. I think the challenge here is finding the right type of location. I feel like certain locations are already proven and they're going to work in basically any culture. And that is a nightclub, Some sort of a nightclub. Other locations I think could be riskier but have potential reward. Universities are well established to work in in Scandinavia. I feel like they would work very well here in North America, although I don't know of anyone currently doing it. Universities do not work well in many other parts of Europe because that's not the culture. I think you're really just going to have to draw on the data that I'm providing and we'll try to send more hard data on locations after this. But other than that, you're going to have to be flexible and be creative to be honest, and leave some flexibility in your contract with the business owner to be able to pull out after 30 days if it's just not looking good. I'm friends with a gentleman named Quinn Miller. He owns hundreds of vending machines in Southern California. And it's very common to have an option in your contract to exit free of penalty within 30 days if it's just not going well because he's been placing vending machines for a decade and even he'll find a perfect location that matches his other perfect locations and it just won't do well. And so you just never know until you really try. All we can do is as much research and data gathering as we can. And yes Eric, they are wall mounted and there is also pedestals for them. There's an additional pedestal option that has a much larger LED screen. If you really get into selling ads, there's a much larger one for an additional charge. After two years of warranty, what is the best selection in getting your machine property insured? Knowing theft or accidental events occur in these retail areas? I'll send that out afterwards because I don't have a lot of answers about insurance other than the customers that I know that that piggyback on the business owner's insurance. I don't have answers about. Like if you rent out the machine to an event or to a wedding, do you get notified when the bottle is running out? Yes. Specs on the machine just did that. How are customer issues handled since it's patented with Perfumatic? So we are the official distributor for North America for service and customer issues like that. That would be handled directly with Perfumatic? Yes, you can go to us and we'll make an introduction. We're not just going to ignore you or anything but they are the ones to go to. Is it possible to accept Apple Pay and Google Pay? Yes, it is. It integrates with Nayax. That's like a big fancy payment processor that most have never heard of because they're not consumer facing. But if it integrates with Nayax it integrates with you and that includes Google and Apple Pay. Can you fit 3.4 ounce bottles? I'm not sure. I'll send that out afterwards. Is a machine made to be built in a wall or they're standardized to be built to be wall mounted? They can be standalone but most of them are wall mounted and that's how they're they're built. Credit card processing fee is around 3% give or take. I can send out the exact one after what share of profits or business typically taking for allowing the machine so 10 to 20%. I'll try to get some more hard data on that. Are there any ongoing fees or costs from Perfumatic? No, no. Has Perfumatic any specified statistics on how well the product works on various countries like Greece? I know there's already an official partner and distributor in Greece. They may have some statistics there but I'm not sure. I'll try to get that to you as well. What does the process look like of getting it placed at a business? Are there any ongoing costs from the machine? How often is a person typically going to replace it so the machine lasts for many years. The warranty lasts for two or a hundred thousand sprays. They've been manufacturing these for 10 years. They've been in business for 10 years. They've been manufacturing this particular model for five years, basically since COVID started. So we know they last for five years. They're still doing really well. But yeah, you don't really know how long they'll last past five. But they're built very high quality. They're not built in China, they're built in Spain with high craftsmanship. Do we get to choose the card processor for the card terminal? I don't believe so. It's all done through Niax. But it also depends on the country. And I'm also not 100%. So Dallas is not saturated. There are none in Dallas Fort Worth. So we don't operate these machines ourselves. We are distributor for them. Okay, can you confirm this is not a vend machine telecommunication device? No, it is. It is a perfume vent and cologne vending machine, but it is often classified as a telecommunication device based on the country that they are being imported into because of the fact that it has a SIM card, which means that you're subject to different VAT and different taxes and different customs duties. Is there an option to be the sole partner in the country for a given period? I believe so. If you could email me, Chris co founders.com I can make the introduction. How would you research a great location, Eric? I think you do that a lot very similarly to how you'd research any retail physical location. It's kind of annoying. It takes a while, it's tedious, but it works really well. And that's. You spend all day there and you count the people going in and out. For instance, if I wanted to open now, Chipotle doesn't franchise, but pretend with me that they did. If I wanted to open a Chipotle and I wanted to know, is there enough demand here? Then I would go to the next closest and I would literally sit in the parking lot. And this sounds crazy, but people do this. This is a common practice. Or sitting in an intersection and counting cars. I would sit in the parking lot and I would count the people coming in and out and I would see what that's like. And then I would take an average order value. I'd make an assumption there and say, all right, you know, most people are by themselves. They're probably spending $12. And then I would use that math to figure out if. If my location might be able to support as many customers as the other location. Is getting or more. So you can often look at traffic counts. If you're in the U.S. you can go to the Department of Transportation website. You can just start talking to people. You can stand outside the business and say, hey, this is very random, but if there was a perfume or cologne machine sitting right here and it cost a dollar and you were headed into the movies or heading out of the gym, would you use it? Would you pay a dollar for it? And honestly, like I would stand in the parking lot of a gym all day and ask every single person that. And if it's a woman, I would say the word perfume. And if it's a man, I would say the word cologne and I would have a spreadsheet on my phone and I would just take a record of that. Now, that data isn't perfectly accurate because the amount of people that tell you yes, I would buy that versus them actually doing it, you're going to have to apply a discount to it. It's not always one for one, but it will give you a really, really good idea of a, the volume, the traffic volume of that particular gym. Maybe you don't, maybe you learn you don't even want to put the machine there because 70% of people would have to buy a spray in order for you to make money. Maybe you learn is ton of traffic way more than you thought. And maybe you learned that no one would do it. And that's probably going to tell you you're probably going to be able to take that data and use it for the gym across town. Right? So I would go to A$10 a month Planet Fitness. I would go to A$300 a month Lifetime Fitness. I would do the same research, compare notes and then use that data and extrapolate it against the whole maybe it's Dallas Fort Worth and say, okay, someone in this part of Dallas is probably someone a lot like someone in that part of Dallas. I could use this data everywhere and I'm going to all the Planet Fitnesses or all the equinoxes or whatever you learn. But the great news is is you can do that research today before you spend a dollar. And it's kind of fun to be honest. That's my favorite part of business is doing that research. So shipping to the Netherlands, I don't have that information. I'm not sure. But just based on having a history in logistics and distribution, I would think it's anywhere from. It depends if you do air or boat. But on the low end, 150 to $250 it depending on the quantity as well. I'm saying if you're only ordering one and on the higher end, six, seven hundred dollars somewhere in there. But if I'm completely wrong, I'll send a retraction afterwards. Yes, I will send a link to this, to this recording. All right, I covered that. Can the SIM card be changed to my own for the data connection about the payment system, I'm not sure about that but I, I do know that the, the credit card deposits can be deposited to any bank account that you have or would prefer. One of the most wear and tear parts that I have to do maintenance on the machine. It's usually on the spray nozzles. There's another one. I can't remember the name of it. I can't remember but I'll send that. Any maintenance cost of the machine 3000 give or take depending on options and quantity. What would you charge a country club? So I if it's like a very specific question, I'm going to pass over that because I've talked about a lot of this stuff and I want to be respectful of everyone's time and I will send the recording per Perfumatic makes this in house. They manufacture these themselves in Spain. We're taking orders immediately starting today. Does it have a battery, power, storage in case of ad? Yes, there is a backup battery in case of outages. Refill bottles yes, you can keep stock of them so you, you're able to refill them more quickly. Of the perfume bottles, Do you make contracts with only person? Is there a step on the pedestal for shorter people? I don't think so. I'm sorry. So all of the international questions, please email me Chris co founders.com because we do have a solution for you. I want to introduce you to Perfumatic to the person in your region, Chris C H R I S I'll put it here in the chat. If you've these emails you've been receiving from me, that's from Chris co founders.com I don't know why hold on not letting me send a chat. So Matt, if you could do that for me. Chris co founders.com nO-C-O-F-O-U-N-E-R-S.com if you're anywhere outside of Mexico, Canada or the United States of America, email me and I will make a direct introduction. If you want to talk about exclusive distribution rights or connecting with them, but in North America specifically, you can email me and we will help you directly. Does perfume life degrade after certain days inside the machine. No, it would have to be many years of sitting that inside the machine to degrade. If you have to pay 70% in advance to buy the machine, how can we ensure our money security? Can we pay that amount through a credit card? Great question. Yes, you can pay it through a credit card. And I understand, I completely understand where you're coming from. And you're also welcome to reach out and like validate us. Perfumatic is in this webinar. But say, hey, like is this guy, is this a scammer? Do you know this guy? Is, is he just selling your stuff without authorization? We are authorized to sell for them in North America and you're welcome to ask them that yourself. So we do have a relationship with a wholesale perfume and cologne distributor in Switzerland that sells the, the actual liquid at a discount that you would have access to. By buying a machine you are able. Great question about the prices. So one thing that we've shown in our research is high end clubs, they demand more high end perfumes. Tom Ford's and you can charge more for it, up to 250 per spray. Mid range clubs, mid range perfumes. And you usually charge between 1 and $150 for those. But you are able to change the price to whatever you want. How many sprays per bottle? Yeah, so it's, I covered that in the beginning cost per month of the actual perfumes. So the, the cost of the perfumes is generally 4 to 8, 4 to 7% of what you're charging. Of course that would be cut in half if you're charging $2 as opposed to one. But at a $1 price point, the cost of the actual perfume. Perfume is a single digit percentage. It's, it's very, very domino. Yes, I will send a copy of the recording. So if a customer wanted to buy perfume through the vending machine, do I have to have my own system of shipping it to them? This is one thing I talked about in my video. You can, you could start an e commerce website and try to source the perfumes and, but I would not recommend that because the volume of people that elect to buy a whole bottle after buying a spray is small. It's, it's a numbers game. Right. So with that in mind, it's not worth building out a whole infrastructure and website and distribution system for that small amount of people that want a whole bottle. You just need to find an existing website that is already doing that and say, hey, do you have any affiliate l where you can cut me 10 to 20% of the sale for all the traffic I sent you. And you take that affiliate link, you convert it into a QR code, you put the QR code right under the picture of the bottle and say, buy whole bottle here. And you can even do that on Amazon here in North America. You can apply to become an Amazon Amazon affiliate. It's very simple and straightforward and that would work really well. It's a smaller percentage. It's more like 4 or 5%. But people, you know, when they scan the QR code and they see Amazon pop up, they trust it more. And so your conversion rate is going to be higher than if some random perfume or cologne website pops up from the limited data. Funny, you asked about one spray. So in certain countries, a lot of people do 2, 3, 4, 5 sprays. It depends on the culture. The average is about 1.5 sprays per person, I would think, in North America. So North America is the biggest market for perfume in cologne on dollars sold basis. It doesn't mean it's the biggest, as big of our culture as it is in European or Middle Eastern companies or countries, but it is the biggest market for perfume in cologne. That said, I would not think that Americans are getting three to five sprays per use. Like you see in Kazakhstan, for example, maybe it's Azerbaijan. I can't remember. Wholesale bottles, so we take payments to purchase the machines. Just. We'll send an invoice to you and you're welcome to set up a sales call. I emailed everyone a link. Everyone that's in here should have a link to our calendar. And so if you want more information, you want to talk to us one on one, you can book a call there for next week, but we'll just send an invoice. You can pay via wire, credit card or anything. Can you pick them up in person? Yes, with advance notice, if you're in Spain. And yes, I will send a recording. There's no deadline to have the machine up and running after you buy it. It's up to you. It's in your hands at that point. There's no, you don't pay a percentage of sales. There's no, there's no obligation to ever place it. That's all in your hands. I don't have data on the specific fragrance was used, but if I can get it, I will send it. Okay. Thank you for posting that comment. The analytics are via. It's a web app, so you can pull it up on your phone through a web app. 70% in advance pay required. Correct. Full amount correct. 70% in advance and 30% upon delivery or right before delivery. Ashley I'll try to get the data on like which perfumes perform best. Delivery time is is about 60 days. It you could pay more like 60 days from to for it to be manufactured once it's actually shipped, typically a week. If you're going from Spain to the US to New York it would be via air. If you want to ask about partnerships or anything like that or other countries, email me once again and I'll make a direct introduction to the person that you need to Talk. Chris co founders.com and that's including within North America. You you are able to use your own suppliers. Like if you're in a pinch and you need to refill it and you didn't have any wholesale on hand, you are able to do that. It's it's just going to be at a higher price. Can the machine be set up for multiple sprays with one purchase? I'm not sure on that but I will find out. There is no fee for the the data product for the software. Multiple prices on one machine depending on the perfume. Let's say I have one expensive perfume and I want to change charge a premium price for that one. Yes. You can charge different prices based on the perfume. Great question. All right. You don't need wi fi at the location. Not four months for making and shipping. Two months. It's yeah the shipping does not take that long. The 60 days is for manufacturing and then it will be shipped right thereafter and you it would not take too long to receive it. I Cantor if you could email me about that I can make an introduction. I don't see any more questions so if you have any more you can email me Chris co founders.com once again if you're international email me Chris co founders.com we'll make sure you get routed to the right place and taken care of. Thank you for joining. I appreciate your time and we look forward to doing business with you.