Let’s be real, talking about sex makes people uncomfortable. But it shouldn’t! And that’s one of the driving principles behind Maude, a modern sexual wellness brand that is disrupting a taboo industry and making sexual health more a part of the overall health and wellness conversation. 

On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, I chatted with the founder of Maude, Éva Goicochea about how she built her company with a combination of excellent content, a growing and vibrant community, and a go-to-market strategy with patience and empathy top-of-mind. Éva also gave us some insight into the lessons she’s learned from bringing Maude into the retail market, and how she goes about assessing customer acquisition and community engagement. Enjoy this episode!

Main Takeaways:

• Getting To Market: Ideate quickly, go to market strategically. Get to know who your customers are, what they want, and what problems they need solved before pushing a product to market. Not only do you need to take into account what your customers want, you also need to consider the associated logistics and cost that product will have to your business. You have to decide if your company is the one that should be creating it and whether the market size is big enough to jump through whatever hoops there are to actually bring that product to life.
• Content is King: Obviously, businesses want to sell goods on their websites. But it may actually be a better strategy to build a site that is less transactional and more content-driven and educational. In doing so, you can attract a casual audience, who are more likely to turn into buyers when they are already on your site.
• Bidding Wars: When wholesaling or working with retailers, a unique problem arises if those retailers try to outbid your brand for keywords and search terms in order to win more customers. Whether or not to fight to win those bidding wars comes down to assessing the value of the customer acquisition method. Is the customer more valuable as a native buyer or do you get the same or more value by having your wholesale partner see success selling your product?

For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.

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