Kyla Dufresne built up Foxy Box from the dining room table to 24 locations by creating an experience and culture of comfort and trust.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.
[Wagmore Garage Doors Ad]
Stephen Semple:
Hey, it’s Stephen Semple here with the Empire Builders Podcast, and I’m here with Kyla Dufresne instead of David Young, which is always so much fun. So we’ve given Dave a little bit of time off. And so we’re going to be speaking about, instead of one of these big companies and going back in time, instead we’re going to be speaking to an entrepreneur that I met at the Canadian franchise show and we got chatting and I was looking at our business and this is going to be a great story. I’m so excited. And I want you to tell me the name of your business and how you came up with the name.
Kyla Dufresne:
Oh my gosh, you’re setting me up for big expectations for your listeners, so I better … So I’m Kyla. I’m the founder and CEO of Foxy Box Laser & Wax Bars. We are a hair removal concept that specializes in the art of the Brazilian. And I always say we’re not just a transaction for hair removal. We really are a movement to make people feel powerful and energized in their bodies. We have 24 locations open across four provinces here in Canada with our-
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, just I want us to think about this for a moment. 24 locations, and I’m going to say it. It’s an idea that if a lot of people were presented with the idea, I think they would go, “Really? Franchises?” And it’s like, “Yeah, really 24 franchises,” which is an awesome number. That’s not an easy number to get to.
Kyla Dufresne:
It’s not an easy number to get to. I think for us, a lot of it was, a lot of our success was timing as well, Stephen, because when I started this business, the hair removal concept was not a concept really in Canada. The US, they’ve got one big player called European Wax Center. They’ve been around for years and years and years, but this concept was a new thing here in Canada. So truly a big part of our success, one is, I mean, obviously our culture and our brand and the success of our franchisees, but it was also timing because we were one of the first hair removal concepts on the market here in Canada. So we really brought this business model to the market, so I think that was a big part of our growth to get to 25 locations within a five-year time span, truly.
Stephen Semple:
It’s been pretty quick when you think about … Because you started off with one location that was your location, correct?
Kyla Dufresne:
You got it. I started off actually, I don’t even know if you could call it a location. A house, that’s where I started it. In the dining room of my house where I had four roommates, there was a dining room area off of my kitchen. I set up a table there and a curtain and got to work building Foxy Box. I joked on when I was speaking with someone not long ago on their podcast that when I built Foxy Box, I always said, “Oh, come see me.” I always was Foxy Box. And so I would give my business cards, but it was my cell phone number on it and then Foxy Box was inside this little weird room in my house. And so I’d have people showing up thinking that they had just showed up at Fight Club and not Foxy Box. Like, “Where in the hell [inaudible 00:04:39].”
Stephen Semple:
Am I in some strange room in Amsterdam? What the heck’s going on here? Yeah.
Kyla Dufresne:
They were like, “What is this place?” But truly, those early days was what shaped and formed the culture that we have today because when I reflect back, that experience that I was giving to customers, I had to make people feel confident and comfortable enough to take their pants off in the dining room of my shared house to get a Brazilian wax. And how I did that was I incorporated humor. I would usually make a joke as soon as they got there about showing up at Fight Club and not Foxy Box or something to diffuse their energy of like, “Where the hell am I in this weird place?”
I would connect with them, really build a relationship with them. So it wasn’t just like coming here and let’s remove your hair. It was building a connection with them. And not only did I never have anyone turn around and run out or say, “No, thank you,” I would have them leave and call five of their friends and go, “Oh my God, I just had the most amazing experience in this weird room and you got to go see Kyla.” And so it was those experiences that kind of helped shape the culture that we have today. And so I preached to my franchisees, “If I could build something successful in that weird room, you all have the most insanely cool four full walls of a branded space, deliver that customer experience inside those walls, you’re going to be wildly successful.”
Stephen Semple:
There’s a lot of power to being able to say to somebody, and power’s maybe the wrong word, but influence, empowering maybe more, to be able to say to somebody, “Look, I know this is going to work because I was able to make this work in this situation, and let’s face it, we can all agree that situation has distinct disadvantages to it.” So I know this is going to work because I’ve done this before. It’s interesting, I’m working with another entrepreneur and they’re struggling a little bit on some of their sales processes. And I was saying to them, I said, “You’ve got to go back on the phone, make those telephone calls, let’s get recordings of them, and let’s show people how you do it because what you do is successful. Let’s replicate.” I want to come back to your early days. What city was this in where you started?
Kyla Dufresne:
Victoria, BC is where Foxy Box came to fruition.
Stephen Semple:
Okay, so you’re in Victoria BC and you’re doing this out of this weird room in your house. How long was it until you were doing enough business that you set up a physical location?
Kyla Dufresne:
Stephen, my roommate-
Stephen Semple:
A separate physical location.
Kyla Dufresne:
Probably bringing maybe five strangers a week to the house before my roommates went, “Ky, you got to stop bringing strangers to the house. You got to think get out of here.” I found a little 10 by 10 room in the back of a jewelry store Downtown Johnson Street, which was like a shop-
Stephen Semple:
Hold on a second.
Kyla Dufresne:
Yes. Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Not at the back of a nail salon or the back of a hair salon, the back of a jewelry store?
Kyla Dufresne:
That’s it. Yeah. And keep in mind though, Stephen, back then when you’re thinking about what my competitors were or where the market was, waxing, you could only find in the back of nail salons, which maybe didn’t have the most hygienic standards, or you were going to go to a high end spa and spend over $100 in a dimly lit room with someone who probably didn’t want to be in there with you. So that was the gap in the market that I was trying to fill, which we did fill.
And so the room that I found was inside of a jewelry store, but the jewelry store was on Lower Johnson, which had the most foot traffic. I mean, it’s since seen a decline because there’s online shopping now, and this was 14 years ago that I found this space, so there was a ton of foot traffic. So it made sense for me. People were coming in and out of that store shopping and I had a sandwich board out front and I got … They were like, “Waxing. Oh my God, do you waxing here?” I got organically busy just by being in that location, which had all that foot traffic.
Stephen Semple:
So even though you’re at the back of the jewelry store, you were still able to have some sort of signage out where the foot traffic was.
Kyla Dufresne:
You got it. I had a sandwich-
Stephen Semple:
A sandwich board. Yeah.
Kyla Dufresne:
… board out on either side. And honestly, Stephen, I was there for maybe three or four months. Truly, I wasn’t there for very long before I knew I needed a space of my own. I started getting very busy. The jewelry store didn’t have the most accessible hours. They were like 10 to 6 and I was like probably 12 hour shifts or really more accessible. And so I needed things like a waiting room. I needed a place for my customers to go that I wasn’t have to like, “Oh, let me come unlock the front door for you.”
And so from there, I found a second level space a few blocks over, closer to more where there was a lot of professional office workers around us. And I built out a two room space with a waiting room, and that’s where I really got to bring my brand and my vision to life, which looks nothing like how our brand looks today. My whole waiting room was red walls all around. I had a Nintendo console with an old TV so that, a lot of my customers were moms and so I’d encourage them like, “Bring your babies in and your kids and they can play Nintendo while I wax you and it’s safe up here. We’re second level and close the door or whatever.”
But since incorporated that into our business model as well, we always position ourselves and pitch ourselves as, “We’re babysitters, we’re fur sitters.” We know that life is busy and so we want to be as accommodating as possible to our customers. So we allow them to bring their kids, bring their babies. Our receptionists double as babysitters. If you have a puppy that you’re like, “I can’t leave it in the car.” It’s a hot day, bring it in. Dogs can’t come into the treatment rooms, but we’ll hold them behind a desk for you. And we’ve got treats and snacks for them. And we really made a point of making sure that we’re accessible to people.
Stephen Semple:
Wow. That’s a very, very different positioning than frankly a lot of businesses would take. That’s really, really amazing. So you got that second level space and I’ve got a couple questions for you on that. One is, so now you’ve got a second level space, so it’s not the same foot traffic going by, but you’ve built some clientele, you’ve built a little bit of word of mouth. What did you do to promote that space?
Kyla Dufresne:
I love talking about this, grassroots marketing because back then-
Stephen Semple:
Perfect.
Kyla Dufresne:
… I had zero dollars for online spend. And I honestly didn’t even really see the benefit of online spend because I organically got so busy, but I was just so good at grassroots marketing.
There’s a combination of things that helped me get busy. One is I was a bartender at the time and the bars that I worked at were very busy and so I used that as my marketing platform. Every single customer that came in, I’d give them a Foxy Box card as well so that they would wake up the next day with a business card in their pocket.
I really leaned into my staff’s strengths and I encourage my franchise partners to do this or anyone that I’m mentoring is really when you can lean in and leverage your staff’s strengths, you’re doing two things. One, you’re getting them to market for you, and three, you’re building a community and a sense of family that they feel like they’re a part of something and they’re helping you build something.
For me, one of my very first hires, she was a burlesque dancer and she worked at a spa that was a few blocks away from Foxy Box that I asked her if she wanted to pick up some shifts at my store. And one of the things that was really kind of brought her down was that the owner of that spa that she worked with really hated that she was a burlesque dancer. She went like, “Don’t talk about it in the store. It doesn’t align with us as a spa.” She wasn’t supportive of that. I leaned into that, Stephen.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, yeah, I can see that.
Kyla Dufresne:
I was like, “Ooh, I have a [inaudible 00:12:29] burlesque dancer. This is what I want you to do. I want you to get your group together. I want flash Mobs,” were I think back then, do you remember that?
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Kyla Dufresne:
People would put a song on and then there’d be a group of people break out into a dance. I went, “Listen, let’s do a flash mob with your burlesque dancers.” They all got together. They came up with a dance to the tune of Foxy Lady. “Ooh, Foxy Lady,” or you know that one?
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Kyla Dufresne:
And [inaudible 00:12:52] the nightclubs, because I had connections at all the nightclubs, I went, “Hey, listen, can I send this group in? Can the DJ play this song? And then I’ve got a team that’s going to clear the floor and do a dance.” And they went, “Absolutely.” So I would send her to the nightclubs, they’d go, DJ would play Foxy Lady. Her and her group would do this dance and then they would hand out Foxy Box coupons and merch. I’d have hats and coupons and things like that. And so that was like my grassroots marketing was getting out into the community with my team.
Stephen Semple:
Brilliant. Brilliant.
Kyla Dufresne:
One of the things that I did, I think naivety is bliss when you’re starting a business. The more you know, the more you can be hesitant or reserved to do initiatives. For me, I didn’t know that to go to universities, you’re supposed to buy a table there and I didn’t know that. And so I would literally, student week, September when all the students would come back, I would load up my car with all of my magicians. I would head to the university and we would give out pens and coupons, things that have our brand on it that they’re going to be using at their desk as well as your first free wax coupons. And we would just like every student that was there, we’d just, “Oh, here, come check us out. Here, come check us out.” Later, years later, I learned that you’re supposed to buy a table. [inaudible 00:14:03] $1,000 and you’re supposed to have a setup, but nobody caught us or a slap our hand, so that was great. But those were some of the early day marketing initiatives that we did.
Dave Young:
Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this.
[Using Stories To Sell]
Dave Young:
Let’s pick up our story where we left off and trust me you haven’t missed a thing.
Stephen Semple:
So I want to make a couple of comments about the early day marketing initiatives because I think this is really important. And it’s funny because right on my website, I say, “I don’t work with startups.” I won’t do marketing for startups. Now it’s not true. I have done marketing for a couple of startups, but the reason why I don’t is the biggest battle I have with startups is stop sitting at your desk behind your damn computer using ChatGPT to try to figure out what your market wants. And then you’re going to do some BS online thing and you never want to get out into the community and talk to people. Stop. Most business is one-on-one person to person. And even if you go out there and it fails, you’re going to learn what it is that they like and they don’t like.
Do that initially. Do grassroots first. Start there. Because then the other thing is when you get that working and then you go to do more mass media approach, guess what you already know? You really and truly do know your customer.
Kyla Dufresne:
Yeah. I think I’ve heard this from so many big speakers is, people buy from people, period.
Stephen Semple:
They do.
Kyla Dufresne:
So absolutely. I coach franchisees on this as well is the importance of getting out into your community. My most successful, fastest profitability franchisees, two months before they opened, they were at every single networking event that they could be at with business cards and coupons before they even opened. Getting out into their community, getting into the hospital unions, the student unions, all of those places to get their name in front of people. Once you have that and you can get your face in front of your community, pair that with online ads and then when they need that service, they’re going to go, “Oh yeah, oh my God. Yeah, I’m going to support that business.”
Stephen Semple:
Yes. It’s now how you extend that.
Kyla Dufresne:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
It’s really interesting, I did a podcast on a company called HexClad. So they make cookware. The guy actually came from a cookware background. He worked for a different cookware company and basically he was like one of those carnival barkers who like when you’re going through Costco was selling stuff, right? And when he created his new product, the first thing he did is he said, “I’m going to go out and I’m going to sell this the way I used to sell stuff.” And the first thing he learned was his first pitch that he thought was going to work failed. And so they used that and then they finally found, “Oh, this is the way people connect with this product. This is actually the things they like about it. Okay, we can now market it.”
Kyla Dufresne:
Yeah, for sure.
Stephen Semple:
It’s that whole person to person thing that you really need to do in startup. But the other part that I really like that you did that I want to highlight here, use of entertainment. Entertainment is how we get the attention. It’s how we buy the time and the attention of a busy and distracted consumer. They don’t care about you. They don’t care about your product. They don’t care about any of that. You start to wrap it a little bit of entertainment, you now have their attention and you leaned into that.
Kyla Dufresne:
And times have changed. And so we’ve kind of pivoted with that as well. That entertainment, we do see a lot online, which is be active on your social media. You have to be. If you’re not, you’re going nowhere these days, truly. So being on TikTok, that’s been huge for us. One of our franchisees found us just from TikTok. We’re funny. We put content in front of people constantly. So we’ve kind of pivoted from that entertainment piece, we want to entertain our customers, but you’re absolutely right. You’ve got to be active on social media.
Another thing, especially in my early days too, Stephen, I speak on this a lot, which is ensuring that you’re taking care of your community. That’s a huge piece of grassroots marketing. Early on, we used to do this thing called Friday features, and I would tag other business owners and give them a shout-out like, “Hey, my friend at this clothing store, here’s a little bio about her. We see you.” And then we would tag her Instagram. So then she’s sharing that and that helps build your social media as well. And it’s giving shout out to other local entrepreneurs. So that was a big piece that we wove into our early days of marketing.
The other thing is that I inherently would just give back to my community, and I didn’t realize that that was creating brand buy-in or marketing, truly. One of my customers had a giant vet bill that she was like, “I have no idea how the I’m going to pay for this vet bill.” And I went, “Let me do a wax fundraiser for you. I’ll give five bucks from every Brazilian that I do on Saturday and you can have that to your vet bill just because I was like, that’s the right thing to do. Take care of this customer support team.”
I just always did that. And now on a bigger scale, what we did is I created an event called Foxy Fest. I was inspired by Lilith Fair, this little music festival put on by all female performers, Sarah McLachlan and Jewel and what have you. And they would do a big charitable fundraiser. And I thought, “How freaking cool would that be if I could do something like Lilith Fair and give back to local charities?” So I launched an initiative called Foxy Fest six years ago now, I want to say. I reached out to a whole lineup of female singers, dancers, spoken word poets and asked them to volunteer their time on International Women’s Day to hold an event that would give back to a local charity. They all volunteered their time. The venue donated the venue to us. It was a nightclub, but also I had great connections, but they’re always happy to do that. And all of the ticket proceeds from that event, and we did a raffle and a fifty fifty, went to a local charity. So that was the birth of Foxy Fest.
And now to this day six years later, we hold that event on International Women’s Day in 24 locations.
Stephen Semple:
Nice.
Kyla Dufresne:
It’s a lot of work. It’s a heavy lift to put on a live event, even though they’re the coolest and the most palpable and a great way, especially for smaller communities, to build that brand in the community by bringing everybody together in one room, it’s a lot of heavy work to put on an event. So some of the stores, if they’re in their early days or they don’t have the capacity to do that at the moment, they’ll do an in store raffle basket that raises money for local charities. But the point is we’re giving back to the communities that serve us.
Stephen Semple:
Nice. And you’re doing it in this really interesting way. But a couple of things I want to go in The Wayback Machine on because the other part that’s about entertainment is even the name of your business, Foxy Box. How’d you come up with the name Foxy Box? Because that’s a bold name.
Kyla Dufresne:
Yeah, I don’t even remember truly. I think I had five names written down, one with a beaver, one with … And I asked everybody, “Which one resonates with you?” And obviously Foxy Box was the obvious choice.
Stephen Semple:
But what I like, and I’m often telling customers about this is, look, you leaned into it. You leaned into what it is you do. You didn’t try to go, “Well, let’s talk about it in this mysterious way,” in which case no one fricking understands. It’s a bold name, it’s an entertaining name, it’s awesome. And I commend you for doing that. And even on the entertainment side, I’m going to go so far as to say, and I know you’re advertising and social media and things, but even if you were … Take this thought away. In future, if you were even to look to go into other media, entertainment is still the key to all of it. Whether it’s radio ad, whether it’s television ad, whether it’s billboard, entertainment is always the key, but you understand that.
So you’ve got your store opened. What happened in the first year? You’ve got now that store, a second level, there’s the Nintendo, all those other things there. How’d the first year work out for you?
Kyla Dufresne:
First year was great. I mean, it was a lot of hard work. I always think that if I started the business now, I don’t know if I’d have the energy for it. I was [inaudible 00:23:13] with Foxy Box and-
Stephen Semple:
What age were you?
Kyla Dufresne:
[inaudible 00:23:15] when I started Foxy.
Stephen Semple:
Twenty … Okay.
Kyla Dufresne:
And no banks would give me a loan. So I used my bartending tips to fund my business until it was self-sustainable. And then I used those profits to build and expand into my next space.
Stephen Semple:
How long did that take before you were into your next space?
Kyla Dufresne:
I was probably up there for, I want to say maybe two years.
Stephen Semple:
Two years. Okay.
Kyla Dufresne:
Well, it feels like it was so long ago. Oh my God, maybe … Victoria Gordon Street has been there for, I want to say eight years and I started … Oh my God, you’re making me do some math here. So maybe I was up there … I might have been up at the second level for about four years, which would make sense because I did pivot. I opened up a second location, tried to expand and do all full services, and I burned that one down after about a year, not literally, but figuratively. So yeah, they were moving and shaking.
Stephen Semple:
So you had the location, then you opened up a second location. So you had two locations and that second location didn’t work out really well. Why did that second location not work out for you?
Kyla Dufresne:
Okay, here’s my Harvard education.
Stephen Semple:
Yep.
Kyla Dufresne:
When I started Foxy Box, I always had this other idea in the back of my head, I just came out the womb an entrepreneur and I’m a classic founder who has 10 billion creative ideas, but I always wanted to open a store called the Diva Den, which you can see I love alliteration and branding, but I wanted to have a full service salon, nails, lashes, hair, waxing, have everything.
And so once Foxy Box was going so well, I had two people come and knock on my door, friends of mine from the beauty industry. They went, “Ky, we’re not happy where we’re at. We want to do nails somewhere else. Would you ever consider opening a nail salon because we love your brand?” And then I had a hairstylist friend come and say the same thing to me. I went, “You know what? Sure. Why don’t I open a whole service salon?” I found a space in Oak Bay, which is a very affluent community, a little bit of an older demographic, but a very affluent community here in Victoria. I found a space and then I thought in my head, Foxy Box is going to be way too bold for this community, so I pivoted and I rebranded, but I wanted to keep it because Foxy Box was so successful, I kind of wanted to piggyback on the success of it. So I was like, “How do I intertwine these?”
So I called it Foxy Lady. I changed the color from a bold red to a nice teal. I kept the logo, but changed the name. And so it was Foxy Lady Beauty Bar instead of Foxy Box Wax Bar. What that did is created a whole lot of confusion. I had my signs up outside on the building and I had people texting me like, “Ky, there’s someone in Oak Bay using your logo.” And, “Oh, that’s me. Come and check us out. It’s a new brand concept. We’re offering all of these services.” We opened our doors, within four months, all of my nail techs went, “We’re going to go open our own business.” They all left. They took all their customers with them, and then I was stuck with a nail salon that I had no clue how to do.
I’m self-proclaimed the best waxer in the world. I filmed our curriculum. I know how to train that, I know waxing inside and out. Nails, I don’t know nails. I don’t know hair. I don’t know. So anyhow, shortly after that, my hairstylist went, “I’m going to go open my own hair salon.” Okay, cool, now I’m stuck with a salon that I know nothing about. And so I hired nail technicians. They were putting out a poor product. I had no idea how to correct it. Thankfully, I was able to get out of my lease after a year, lost a bunch of money on that. Not a bunch. I’d say maybe 30,000, which was a shit ton for me back then.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, for sure.
Kyla Dufresne:
I lost 30 grand in that venture, but I was able to get out of my lease, walked away from that, burned that idea to the ground. I went, “We do one thing and that’s hair removal because that’s what I know, and we just stuck to our model.”
Stephen Semple:
Oh, no, no.
Dave Young:
What?
Stephen Semple:
I was enjoying this episode.
Dave Young:
Don’t worry. Part two’s coming next week.
Stephen Semple:
It better.
Dave Young:
Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us a big fat, juicy five star rating and review at Apple Podcasts. And if you’d like to schedule your own 90-minute empire building session, you can do it at empirebuildingprogram.com.
