S6E5: Lisa Bubbers, Co-Founder of Studs, is Bringing the Ear-Piercing Industry into the Modern Era with Integrated Piercing and Shopping Experiences

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On today's episode of The Room Podcast, Claudia and I sit down with Lisa Bubbers, co-founder and chief brand officer at Studz. Studz is a next-gen ear piercing experience and jewelry brand. Their core mission is to empower bold self-expression and inclusive community through, quote, ear scaping with safe and healthy ear piercings and the curated destination of earrings. An ear scape can happen IRL for Studs customers in one of their 12 locations across the country, from New York to LA, Nashville to Austin. When you walk in, you're greeted with a fun, colorful, yet soothing space where you can shop for earrings that range in self-expression while you wait for the moment to safely get a new piercing. Lisa and her co-founder Anna Harmon didn't always start in the ear piercing industry. Lisa started her career doing large-scale brand activations and advertising and went on to work for household brands such as Jonathan Adler. While we can see threads from her early days working alongside other brands, it wasn't always a given that Lisa would launch her own. Anna and Lisa initially met through mutual friends and had known each other for years prior to launching Studs, a friendship built on mutual respect. They left their jobs at the time in 2019 to launch Studs. Today, they have raised venture capital from top-tier consumer investors from Lair Hippo, First Round, Thrive, and Spark Capital. They most recently announced their Series B last fall, but the pandemic did bring interesting times for a company whose secret sauce is predicated upon exceptional in-person customer service. We discuss this and more in today's episode. And include insights and themes such as the great earscape, building your business with a complementary co-founder, and a look towards the future of the modern mall. Let's open the door.

Lisa, thank you so much for joining us in The Room today.

Of course, thank you for having me in The Room.

We're really delighted to have you here and to get to tell the story of Studs. But before we dive into your entrepreneurial career, we always like to ask the beginning of your own story, Where did you grow up and how has that shaped your view of the world?

I grew up in Los Angeles, California, and I've been in New York since 2006. And how it's shaped my view of the world, I do feel like I'm half California, half New York in both my personality, mentality, approach. I think I've got a lot of the New York City hustle, a lot of ambition, a lot of rigor, but Californian at heart, playful, can be laid back, maybe a little chaotic at times. And so I think of myself as 50/50.

I have similar roots on both the West Coast and the East Coast.

I was born in Atlanta and then moved to Seattle when I was a kid. And so then going back to school in New Hampshire, it was like, wow, there's all these different bits and pieces of culture that I've ingested that have formed me into me, which is true for many people's identities. But in that California cool girl aesthetic meets now New York Yeah. Did you always think you were gonna become a founder?

No, definitely not. I think that my original aspiration was to become a curator. And so when I was at the University of Pennsylvania, I was in a major that started when I was a freshman. So it started my first year at Penn. It's called Visual Studies, and it was a hybrid of visual art, art history, communications, science and psychology, philosophy, just through the lens of Visual culture, and I did my senior thesis on curating contemporary art, had interned at the Institute of Contemporary Art on campus, interviewed a lot in New York City to be working for curators at the Met and MoMA. So that was my original aspiration and landed as a founder, which I think is a fantastic place to land for me and makes a lot of sense, but not where I originally thought I'd start out.

It's funny to hear you say this word curator out of context, because I do know that there are museum curators, of course, but I think today in our bubble of tech, I hear curation as it relates to e-commerce and influencer culture. And so I'm reminded we've been curating for years. How did that degree from UPenn translate into your early work experience?

My early work experience in New York was really directly related to it. I was an assistant to the branding and integration group at Ogilvy, which is a big advertising agency at the time, no longer exists, was doing big experiential activations. And that was a new division of Ogilvy as an advertising company. I've always been interested in new. I always like to be in the first department for the first time. That's always exciting to me. And at that time, activations as an advertising vehicle or as something that a company like American Express would want was new. And that was like the new way of visual storytelling that wasn't— up at that point Ogilvy had been doing like print advertising, TV advertising, all of the traditional kind of Mad Men adver— advertising. So being able to offer an experiential museum of something was totally new. So I was an assistant in that group, and after that I had thought that I would go to interior architecture school and applied to grad school, decided not to go, and ended up on the business side of design eventually. But I've always been interested in visual culture and art and design and the practice of art and design.

It is always so exciting to me when I get to chat to other founders that kind of have that passion. They studied art history and architecture as part of degree, and I remember going through school and my parents were like, well, how are you going to use that? You're going to work in a gallery? Like, what are you doing? And I think looking back now, it is such a superpower being able to think from a different perspective, given that design and the intersection of like physical and digital is so critical to just like experiences today and building consumer experiences. It was actually a really important thing to learn. And so with that, I want to chat a little bit more about your early career pre-studs. Post-U Penn. Madison and I have quite a bit of experience as well working in retail, myself at Calvin Klein and Madison at Rent the Runway and Gap. I'm curious, what lessons did you learn around the intersection of the digital and physical at places like Jonathan Adler and Home Polish?

Jonathan Adler was an amazing place to learn. Jonathan had built an incredible brand, and the brand when I joined was 15 years old and he had done a lot of different types of projects. He'd already have stores, hotels, and I was on his licensing and partnerships team, which was all about like brand extension and creating. First I was his assistant, which is just a great learning experience to begin with. I love hiring people that were assistants because there's no harder job in New York City than being a personal assistant. So I was Jonathan's assistant and then on his partnerships and licensing team, and it was all about taking a brand that existed and extending it to new categories. I worked on his books, I worked on his collaborations with other brands, I worked on taking his patterns on licensing deals to make them neckties and fabrics and things like that. And he had a number of different licenses at the time. I also was a personal assistant to the president who worked on all of the real estate expansion. And so I learned a lot about how to basically take an iconic brand and blow it out, how to build retail environments, how to build collaborations and partnerships working on the brand 360. And then joining Home Polish, that was really interesting because I was very excited to join a company that wanted to democratize interior design and interior design services and figure out how to make something that had been previously reserved just for the elite. The founders of that company wanted to build something for people that were more around 28 and maybe had a $25,000 budget, had some furniture already from West Elm and IKEA, want to do a little bit of an upgrade, wanted to get the Scarface poster down, wanted to get a bed frame, wanted to get some plants, wanted to figure out how to get the feng shui and get the layout, but didn't have endless budget and didn't want to give that budget that they could spend on furniture to a designer. And so that was a really amazing learning experience on how to just build a company, build a startup, and was a totally different set of skills than Jonathan Adler, but both obviously rooted in design.

From those two incredible experiences and varied experiences, in 2019 you wake up and decide to launch Studs, which is really going to be the bulk of our conversation today. Studs is a new ear piercing experience that enables consumers to express themselves through earscaping. Two questions for you. What is earscaping to you? And then what happened in 2019 that led you to this aha moment?

Earscaping is a term I invented to kind of describe a new category that my co-founder Anna and I wanted to create. The aha moment in 2019, my co-founder Anna and I have very complimentary skill sets, really similar values. We've been friends for 10 years. We wanted to start a company together. Anna went to go get a second piercing on her own at a very premium place in New York City where it was going to be a long wait. It was packed and it was going to be very expensive and she didn't feel like waiting. And then I went with her to go get pierced at a tattoo shop because she knew she wanted to get pierced with a needle and not with a gun. And while the needle piercing was very healthy and she liked her piercer, the environment— she felt really out of place in the environment and the assortment wasn't exactly what she wanted and it was still quite expensive. And then we were like, wow, no one has touched piercing at a national scale in 30 or 40 years. Like, it's really ripe for reimagination. And then we started looking at it and realized and talking to the potential customer and realized that customers were going to get pierced, waiting for their ear to heal, and then going to go shop for earrings somewhere else. So they would go to St. Mark's, go to a tattoo shop, get a piercing. They would never talk to that shop again. They wouldn't have a digital connection to them. There was no aftercare. There was no customer service. Hopefully their ear would heal and then they would go to Revolve and buy earrings or they would go to Urban Outfitters and buy earrings. And we were like, wow, you don't get a hole in your head just to have a hole in your head. Like a merchandise, merchandising, right? You want to put a bunch of earrings in these holes. And so there wasn't really any reason why these experiences were disconnected or disparate. And our aha moment was really, A, the retail environment for ear piercing is ripe for reimagination to create a retail environment for Gen Z and millennial customer to suit their needs. And then there's an even bigger opportunity to connect that to earring purchasing. And when we were thinking about that new category and that connected experience, I was like, there's no word for this right now. And so came up with the EarScape and EarScaping as the verb to talk about the art and science of getting personalized piercings. Our piercing service is highly consultative, and I think that was a hole in the market. We love using ear puns. So big hole in the market was basically that a piercer that could really sit with you and help you plan out your EarScape or retail team that could help you style So you could think, I don't just want this second piercing, I'm going to want a third, fourth, and fifth. What's my whole plan? And then I want them to be done with a needle. I want it to be healthy and safe. And then I want to have all this cute jewelry to put in my healed holes that I can change out depending on my mood or my event. And so that's where it all was born from. So she and I put pen to paper on the idea in 2019.

You mentioned your co-founder, Anna, and how you've been friends for 10 years. I see a lot of parallels between myself and Madison McIlwain, and so would love to dig into how you met and how you've decided to co-found something together?

Anna's husband is my best friend from college's best childhood friend. So, long way of saying we have a very close mutual friend and we've known each other for a long time and we had both been in startups and had been using each other as sounding boards to talk about the industry and the future of our own careers and just the future of startups. And so, through those conversations, just decided that we would be a great team. I'm on the brand and creative. Side, and Anna is our CEO and has an operations background. And services businesses are very operationally intense and require a really amazing brand. HomePolish was a services business, which was in-home interior design services. Jetblack, where Anna was, also a concierge services business. Anna had been at Walmart running the retail incubator, so she really knew a lot about the future of retail and is also a lawyer, which is always helpful. We just felt if we could join forces and find an idea that we both were excited about between my side of the coin on brand and marketing and creative and design and her side of the coin on finance and ops and being the CEO, we could nail it. And I think we were right.

When picking a co-founder, I think it's really helpful when there's like a multi-year relationship behind it because it really is something that you're going to be doing for many years and a lot of trust is really required. And so what advice would you have for our listeners who are maybe thinking about starting something or looking for a co-founder? Co-founder in terms of how to think about whether a co-founder is the right fit and what you really look for in that person?

It's the same in any relationship that you're getting into. It's really about finding similar values and making sure you're aligned. And so with Anna and I, we're both extremely transparent people, and we both had a lot of similar vision for how we'd want a company to operate. And we are very direct with each other, and I think that works for us. And we have an executive coach that we see together, and we keep the lines of communication, like, really open. And I think we both have a lot of integrity and want to operate with a lot of integrity. And so I think Anna shares the values I care about in people in general, but I definitely care about in a co-founder who you're going to be going into business with, finding someone that you— has the right values, has values that you have or that you want in a partner. And then also that you really do have a lot of transparency and direct feedback, because a lot of stuff comes up that you're going to have to talk about.

That certainly resonates. And when building a business, it's not just about your co-founder or your team of employees, but it's also around a few other stakeholders like investors in which you're going to be building a relationship with for years to come. You've successfully raised venture capital from a number of investors, including Lerer Hippo, First Round, Thrive, and Spark Capital. Tell us, who was the first person to say yes to you, and what was that early fundraising journey like?

The first person to say yes to us was Hayley Barna, who was the co-founder of Birchbox, who's a VC at First Round. Hayley is a good friend of me and Anna's. We both knew her and really trusted her. And so we showed her Studs in its infancy when it was just an idea. She really helped us think through the idea. She said yes to us. They led our seed round. Very fortunate to have Hayley on our team. I can highly recommend Haley, as an investor, she's hard to get on your team, but if you get her on your team, I think you're quite lucky.

I'm struck by just the conversation you shared around ear scaping and how you are creating this new category and how honestly when you say ear piercings, there's a lot of loaded assumptions that come in for different individuals. Before we got on this call, we were just chatting about our early ear piercing stories. Lisa, could you share what your first piercing was like?

My first piercing is a classic story. I was with my sister and my mom at the mall in the Valley in LA, and at a Claire's. For most people I talk to, that's their early piercing experience.

I'm also struck by how The Parent Trap piercing moment maybe defined a generation.

I do not recommend any home piercing.

I actually have a related funny story. I have a really good friend from college that is not originally from the US. She's from Europe, and she originally got her ears pierced when she was like 6 years old, and the holes closed. She's 28 years old, and she's looking to get her ears pierced again in advance of her wedding. And I remember like probably 6 months ago she was texting me like, is there anywhere else that isn't this? And she sends me a screenshot of herself at a mall and standing in front of a Claire's and there's a bunch of 4th grade girls there.

Thankfully there's Studs.

Uh, yes, now there's Studs. Exactly.

With that, you really are leaning into the physical and direct-to-consumer experience of both shopping for what you're going to put in the holes, but also getting the holes in the place. And interestingly, just to contrast this, what's happening for other retailers like my former employer Gap, who's currently closing in-person retail stores pretty much en masse. How is Studs thinking about the future for omnichannel retail?

We're very lucky to have an authentic sticky service that you have to come do in person. So you cannot get your ears pierced online. You must come to a practitioner to get your ears pierced. And so We have a natural draw to get people into our stores, and there's a lot of latent demand, like your story of your friend, for healthy and safe ear piercing in an environment that's made for an 18 to 40-year-old. In a time where retail is challenging, Studz has an incredible advantage with the service we have that gets people into the store because they really want this service and they're willing to come in person to get it. That allows us to have leverage in the overall retail environment.

That makes a ton of sense. And having that draw in person— when I was at Gap Brands, that was something we were really working on through our buy online, pick up in store motion, which was to help us offload some of the shipping costs, but also drive you in store and seeing a lot of lift ultimately on the purchases when you get someone in on that foot traffic. Of course, we're coming off of a season where foot traffic was much less common. Curious about how the pandemic impacted your guys' initial IRL strategy and what's to come with that now that we're hopefully, fingers crossed, coming out of a digitally-first-only experience.

We reopened 12 prints during the pandemic and there were a lot of open questions about what would happen. Do people need to go get their ears pierced during a pandemic? But what happened for us is because you could wear a mask while you were getting pierced and we require masks masks even now in the piercing rooms because our piercers and our retail associates could wear masks. We were able to get back to pre-pandemic piercing really quickly as soon as we reopened the doors. I think during the pandemic, people didn't have a lot of things they could do that were fun. They couldn't go travel, they couldn't go to big parties, and so they were bored and they were trapped inside and it was a dark time. And so going to get an ear piercing in a way that was safe and they could do locally was actually like something fun they could do and an experience they could have. And so we were able to thrive and succeed during COVID which helped us gain momentum when, as things lessened with COVID We're about to open our 10th store and we were basically launching our 3rd store of May last year. So it's been a pretty quick expansion.

Congratulations on hitting that exciting milestone of almost 10 stores. Although we're an audio-first platform, could you try to visualize what it's like and the feeling that comes to mind for you when you walk into a Stud Store?

Studs are very light and bright. I think they're cool. We use neon and the shimmery dichroic film, and we have a white ear bar and the organic shape sort of inspired by the ear. We have really cool bright neon green acrylic visual merchandising tools and white pearly tools where all of the earrings sit on the ear bar. We have an ear diagram that is like an ear map that helps you pick which piercing you want. And then we have these quasi-clinical and still cute and cool piercing rooms. And so it's sort of like part medical, part very cool experiential activation. There's always a good selfie moment in the stores to celebrate the piercing you just got. And they're made to be for everyone in the time we're in. So I think they feel really modern and fresh and they're made for anyone that wants to get a piercing.

I can see how your early experiences are weaved into helping tell this continued story and create and invoke emotion when it comes to shopping. We've talked about the idea of a modern friend on this podcast before, which the definition of we've heard is someone that you meet digitally first that then your friendship can transcend into an in-person one. And we're curious for you because you've been able to build and cultivate experiences both online online and in person. What do you think the modern mall might look like in 5 years?

I have a stud in my childhood mall, Century City, and Kelly Worcester redesigned that mall. And while it looks different and the stores are different, that mall feels a lot like the mall I went to when I was young. I think people still really wanna go to a mall. I think they just want that mall to be reimagined for today. And they wanted to have great outdoor communal spaces. They wanted to have great design. Wine. They wanted to have the right shops. They want to have the right food and bev. Hudson Yards were opening this month, and we had a pop-up, and we had a store in Hudson Yards when we launched, and now we're reopening in Hudson Yards. Now those malls are thriving. I'm sure some people are like, the future of the mall is the metaverse, and it's digital, and it's virtual, and it's AR. I'm like, probably some of that, but when you go to Century City and there's just so much foot traffic, and people are there with their families, and they can go get so much of their shopping done and food and bev done, and it's so vibrant. I think the premium mall continues to be awesome.

Until there's an Annie's Pretzel in the metaverse, I'm not showing up because I don't go to a mall without an Annie's Pretzel.

Exactly.

I love that. It's just interesting to think about how we all hold the sentimental value of a mall. It's where many of us would hang out with friends as kids, thinking about some of our earliest consumer experiences. And then now today, after 2 years of of really being deprived of those mall moments for the most part, of being back out there. I'm really excited to see what more comes from the resurgence of the physical in-person moments for consumers. We've talked to a few consumer brands on our podcast and a lot of whom have both a physical and a direct-to-consumer motion. And with a lot of things changing with Apple's privacy laws and general innovation in how people reach consumers. Would you mind sharing a little bit more about the Studs D2C tech stack? What are some products, SaaS products, you couldn't live without? And then where would you think there's actually room for innovation for a company to come in and better support the Studs shopping experience online?

We're on Shopify, which I am sure most of your companies that come and join your podcast are on.

I would say the majority are, yeah.

Yeah, I think that's Shopify has done an incredible job. They're very open to iterating and incorporating new technology. And we have had a lot of great experiences with Shopify. So all of our tech is rooted in our Shopify experience. And then the tech that I think we're getting the most leverage out of right now is maybe Klaviyo. I know we're doing all of our email and SMS through Klaviyo right now. And we have a great email and SMS marketer that's working through all of our cohorts and segmentation. Alchemy, now called Replo, is our visual development tool for the front end. That's been incredible. A lot of our landing pages and marketing pages on our site are done via Ruplo. It's a huge tool to basically be able to not rely on either what Shopify gives you or on engineering for your front end pages. And so I would recommend that to anyone. And I think that's been really useful for our digital product team.

One other area that we're really excited about is subscriptions for CBG products. Do you guys think about having a subscription offering for EarMoments?

We're not currently focused on subscription. It's not a replan product. Ear piercing is very life moment focused. When you're on a bachelorette party or you're traveling with friends or you're celebrating a birthday or you just want to have something really fun to do after brunch. And so I think unlike subscription for maybe something like a daily skincare or a tampon where there's just a very structured cycle to how and when you need the product replenished, Studs is more interested in the future of bundles, you know, which is this omnichannel bundling of services and offerings. And so I think there's a lot of exploration for Studs around that, but not a subscription particularly.

It's interesting sitting on my side of the table where as an investor, we're often asking brands, what's your LTV to CAC? How do you think about your lifetime value of your customer? And of course, one way to do so is through subscriptions because that is reliable recurring revenue. But what I'm also hearing you say is you can build loyalty with customers through having an emotional moment for them, like getting a piercing, and have that be something that they think about the next time they have a moment in their life. With all of this, we've talked a lot about specifically the journey to get to Studs where they are today in 2022, which is incredible, opening your 10th store upcoming. But beyond that, what's next for Studs?

What is literally next is I go to Nashville next week to start working on our Nashville opening. Very excited to open that city. And we are working on a lot of store expansion, which is very exciting. And we also work on a lot of drops, earring drops and earring collaborations. You'll see us launch our first glow-in-the-dark collection, our first glow-in-the-dark earring collection called Out of This World, which also has teeny tiny lava lamps. And I think one thing that really differentiates Studs in the earring direct-to-consumer space is our merchandise is very broad, over 250 earrings we sell in singles. And so you can mix and match, which is a value prop. But we also have really novel designs that are pretty fun. So you can create an earscape that is uniquely you. And so we don't take it so seriously, like we have to be this like very dainty, fine brand that only has the same thing. Like we can really be more experimental with our earring collection. And so I think things like launching glow-in-the-dark earrings or mini lava lamps gives us some of our brand differentiation.

It seems like there's a bunch of exciting things on the horizon that current and future Studs clients and customers should be looking forward to. But I would also love to zoom in a little bit more on yourself, Lisa. We chatted about what's next for Studs, but what's next for you personally?

I, as our Chief Brand Officer, am always looking to what is the future of Studs and the future innovation of Studs and what's the brand that Studs can become. I really love brands like Nike. That have figured out how to become very mass, but serve a bunch of different customers very well. You can have a middle schooler that's obsessed with sneakers that loves Nike, and you can have a mom that's like a weekend jogger that loves Nike. They have an incredibly diverse and broad customer base, and they serve all of those customers really well. And I think that they've done an incredible job with the brand. When I think about the future of Studs, Studs is going to be very mass and hopefully quite large. And so I'm always thinking about How do we build— Studs is not even 3 years old yet. How do I build that future empire?

We're excited for that future empire to come, and I'm excited to now know where to refer all of my friends who are looking for that first to 10th piercing. And as we wrap up our conversation today, we have this one hero question that we ask all of our guests on the podcast. And that question is, who is a woman in your life that has had a profound impact on you and your career?

I, I love that question. It's definitely Anna, my co-founder. I think she is such a juggernaut, such an impressive person, and has really helped me grow as a founder and a leader and really pushes me and my ideas to be better. And so I love working with Anna every day. I've spent more hours with this person than anyone else at this point. And so I think that's the person that's definitely had the biggest impact on me in the last 5 years.

Love to hear that. It's always so inspiring and energizing to hear from founders where like the founding team is both female. That's the energy that we love to shed light on in this podcast. Thank you so much, Lisa, for spending the time to chat about your founding journey and all the exciting things to come with Studs. It's been a pleasure to have you on today.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you so much for joining us in The Room podcast. If you want more from The Room every week, subscribe to our newsletter at theroompodcast.com/newsletter. We'll be back next week with a new episode and inspirational guest. Tuesday, June 21st, 10 AM Eastern, 7 AM Pacific. See you in the room. Support for The Room comes from Silicon Valley Bank. Silicon Valley Bank understands these questions can keep founders up at night like Claudia. For over 35 years, Silicon Valley Bank has helped high-growth companies companies through scalable financial solutions, plus insights and expertise that many other banks just can't. Which could be why 50% of US-based venture-backed tech and life science companies bank with SVB. Learn more at svb.com/next. Silicon Valley Bank, built for what's next.

Cooley is a global law firm built around startups and venture capital. The firm has been devoted to entrepreneurs and investors, partnering with both to transform breakthrough ideas into successful companies. Cooley works with thousands of entrepreneurs and newly formed companies to ensure that they are structured for growth and long-term success. Since 2005, Cooley has been ranked the number one most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public. Learn more at cooley.com and cooleygo.com, Cooley's award-winning free legal resource for startups.

All opinions expressed by Claudia and of Madison and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of The Five EC. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.