Asutra CEO Stephanie Morimoto shares her journey of transforming a primarily Amazon-based wellness brand into a diversified DTC and retail player, significantly boosted by an authentic partnership with Venus Williams. She provides actionable insights on expanding beyond marketplaces, navigating the complexities of retail partnerships, and effectively leveraging celebrity endorsements to build a strong brand identity around "active self-care."
It’s good to have celebrity boosting your brand. That’s what self care wellness brand Asutra, which sells products like soaps, sleep aids and anti-aging serums, learned when Venus Williams reached out to the company asking how she could be involved. After some meetings, Williams became the chief brand officer and the company’s most prominent spokesperson. “She talks a lot about active self care and Asutra in the press and on social and makes big announcements for us,” said CEO Stephanie Morimoto on the Modern Retail Podcast. She added, “we obviously did not set out to have a celebrity partner -- we frankly would not have done it if Venus had not come to us.” Celebrity spokespeople aside, Asutra has had a wild few years. In 2018, Morimoto bought the company, which first launched in 2015. She described the original owners as “serial entrepreneurs” who put the business up for sale when she was looking for her next business venture. At the time, Asutra sold most of its products on Amazon, and she believed she could help transform it into a DTC wellness player. Part of that has been about rebranding the company as “active self care,” as she described it. Another big part has been on diversifying channels. “Our big focus as a team has been to diversify our revenue channels so that we’re not so reliant on Amazon,” Morimoto said. “Hopefully, depending on how a couple of retail partnerships go this year, we’ll probably go from 99% Amazon to about 60% Amazon -- with a good chunk coming from retail, and then also from what we consider DTC, which is our own website.” Retail has certainly been an interesting nut to crack. Asutra’s first major retail partnership was with CVS. While it gave the brand widespread distribution, Morimoto learned a few things about matching customers with products. “People mostly go to CVS to fulfill their prescriptions and use the pharmacy,” she said. So it was hard to catch shopper’s eyes when they weren’t necessarily thinking about self care product