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We are excited to announce the inaugural episode of Reddy at the Helm: the official podcast of Voyage hosted by Voyage CEO Rev Reddy. We couldn’t have asked for a better guest for our first episode—Ajay Mehta, the CEO and co-founder of Birthdate Co.
We are excited to announce the inaugural episode of Reddy at the Helm: the official podcast of Voyage hosted by Voyage CEO Rev Reddy. The goal of this podcast is to delve into the stories of leading marketers, founders, and retail executives, to learn how they built unbeatable marketing programs that have spurred innovation and success.
We couldn’t have asked for a better guest for our first episode—Ajay Mehta, the CEO and co-founder of Birthdate Co.
Rev and Ajay discuss why Birthdate Co.’s products have been such a success, Ajay’s journey as an entrepreneur, and much more.
Based on your birth date, Birthdate Co. crafts one-of-a-kind astrology candles and books that make the perfect personalized gift for any occasion.
Every brand’s dream is to launch and have customers instantly fall in love with their product. Birthdate Co. did just that. Ajay noticed that there was a space of people that were passionate about astrology, particularly on social media where there was an astrology renaissance happening.
“I felt like astrology was having a real special impact on people, yet, there weren’t a lot of great products made for people that were into astrology, and that was the seed of the idea,” Ajay explained.
Birthdate Co. used the power of astrology and eCommerce to create hyper-personalized products that couldn’t be found in traditional retail environments.
“Personalized products aren’t something that you can walk into a Target and buy, but you can buy from a website, like we launched with 365 individual SKUs. So, it was a combination of those things—personalization, customization, and a really excited and vibrant community of people that loved astrology and sharing astrology content,” said Ajay.
This personalization resonated with their customers so much that Birthdate Co. received high-profile attention right off the bat.
“Within the first six months of launching, we were on the Today Show as a hot gift. A year after launching, we were in Ariana Grande's story because someone gave it to her for her birthday. And recently, we’ve been in Kendall Jenner's Instagram posts and Julia Fox’s. It’s definitely reached some level of cultural resonance, which has been really gratifying.”
Birthday Co. has continued the theme of personalization in every part of its marketing, including SMS. Using segmentation, they were able to send highly-targeted weekly horoscope SMS campaigns and saw CTRs of over 20%.
Ajay’s background is in software and tech, but he has found a love for creating physical products that bring people joy. He points out that we all have had those moments where we have been using an object and thought “I wish it was a little bit more like this or like that”, which could be the beginning of a great idea.
When asked about founder best practices and what he has seen work well, Ajay answered with two suggestions: have a hard-to-beat product and find an amazing team.
Ajay explains that there are great companies that immediately had copycats come out of the woodwork and commoditized what they were doing. You don’t want to immediately be knocked off by everyone else.
“We put a lot of work in up front to create individualized labels, readings, scents, for all of our individual birthdate candles. So, that's a hard thing to copy. Copycats have come for sure, but no one yet, has tried to copy us and actually succeeded in making the quality of product that we are making.”
Ajay’s second piece of advice is to surround yourself with talented people.
“I think that partnering with awesome, talented people, operators, co-founders, and agency partners is the biggest form of leverage that there is.”
Due to the nature of the product, Birthdate Co. has pivoted a lot of its marketing strategy around the idea of gifting. As a highly gifted product, it changes its customer lifetime value and customer experience.
“We don't have the same innate level of customer retention. Say you're buying a skincare product for yourself, if you have a great experience with it, hopefully, you’ll come back and buy it again. But if you buy something as a gift for someone, you give it to them, and you have a great experience, it might not necessarily mean you’re coming back in the next 30 days to buy another gift. However, we have an element of virality. You get a gift for someone in your life. They love it. Then they think, my cousin's birthday is now coming up, let me get them a birthdate book, or maybe even another thing from this brand that I know makes great gifts. So retention may be potentially weaker, but we have the virality aspect that you don't quite get as much of in products that people are buying for themselves,” explained Ajay.
To listen to the full podcast, check out the video or audio at the top of this blog or head to Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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