“We’re a small company, but we need to appear very professional in the way we tell our story. That’s a big part of where the Beautiful.ai platform was able to help us."
—Stacia Jensen, Founder of LilyBee Wrap
A small business making a big difference
When Stacia Jensen founded LilyBee Wrap back in 2017, she did so with a clear mission: to provide an environmentally-friendly alternative to plastic food wraps—a chemically harmful product that often gets used only once before being tossed away.
The solution was a 100% cotton wrap with a natural solution of beeswax, tree resin, and organic coconut oil. Rather than throwing the wrap away after each use, which is both wasteful and expensive, with LilyBee Wrap, you can simply rinse it off, let it dry, and then use it again (and again), for up to 12 months with the same wrap—helping to save the environment and your wallet.
The challenge of telling a story
As a fast-growing New Zealand-based startup, on a mission to change the world—one eco-friendly wrap at a time—LilyBee faced many common challenges: Their employee count ballooned in short order; the company needed to prep for market expansion; operational challenges surfaced as demand increased.
LilyBee’s growth, like its product, has mostly been organic. People love the company’s family story and their desire to reduce the world’s need for harmful plastics. It’s a message they can emotionally connect to. But how do you eloquently express that story during brief meetings with retailers and potential clients? “That’s a big part of where the Beautiful.ai platform was able to help us,” said Jensen. “We’ve been using it for all of our big presentations as we look to expand into the States.”
“We found that PowerPoint presentations would often look messy and not very cohesive,” she continued. “It’s often overwhelming, not to mention time-consuming. With the Beautiful.ai platform, there’s a framework there to work within. It enables us to take some of the thought out of creating presentations, because the platform does the hard work for you.”
Creating marketing materials that truly inspire is critical for LilyBee’s expansion plan: “We’re still a small company, but we need to appear very professional in the way we tell our story,” says Jensen. “Retailers meet a lot of people and evaluate different products all the time, so to be able to create a presentation that tells our story in the most emotional of ways, and connects with the people in the room, helps us stand out from the crowd."
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Harnessing speed and collaboration
As any entrepreneur will know, when momentum is on your side, you need to move swiftly to capture the opportunity. For LilyBee, they found themselves meeting retailers far and wide, often on short notice. They needed a product that could enable them to develop stunning presentations efficiently, as well as collaborate in real-time from around the world.
Beautiful.ai’s cloud-based platform enabled LilyBee to create impactful presentations in tandem with other team members in a fraction of the time: “Being able to collaborate and edit the deck from anywhere is a big deal,” she says. “The process is seamless, and as a startup, we can’t afford any unnecessary friction.”
With Beautiful.ai’s smart slide templates, Jensen was able to create a variety of slides—from animated charts, timelines, tables, diagrams, and more—all wrapped with stunning visuals using a combination of the platform’s comprehensive stock photo library and their own professional photography. They were also able to easily duplicate and customize content, design themes and styling based on their potential retail partner.
“We didn't want to use the same presentation for every retailer; we wanted to create something custom—something that speaks to their brand as well as ours,” Jensen said. “If they connect to our brand story, and see similarities in their own brand, there’s a much higher chance we’ll be successful.”
Making an impact in more ways than one
While LillyBee Wrap impacts the world by reducing the demand for plastics, its presentations are impacting its customers and clients: “During presentations, people definitely ‘get’ our brand’s story,” says Jensen. “We receive a lot of feedback about our professionalism for such a young company.”
That professional quality has paid off: LilyBee Wraps announced their partnership with Amazon to bring their products to US-based customers, as well as a collaboration with Volvo during their "Turn The Tide On Plastic" international sailing competition.
As the company expands, Jensen vows to remain true to the brand’s family roots. For them, it’s about making a difference, leaving the world a better place—a mission that is clearly resonating with users and retailers alike.
Read more customer success stories and case studies here.
