a friend of mine a long time ago said told me this gave me this imagery which I thought was really interesting it was like a a jellyfish has to suck into itself before it can Propel forward right so if you think of a jellyfish it's like all of its power even octopus any of these it's like comes in and it comes into itself and it pushes forward and I always thought of that I was like I can't go forward anymore if I don't come into myself and I don't pull in all of my energy and
my power to be able to thrust forward hello hello hi everybody hi ladies yeah hi C and Katherine thank you so much for being here thanks for having us yeah thanks for having us awesome I think everyone's really excited to see you and we're here to talk about your wine brand avalene which I hope everyone is drinking what a great group of women totally so Cameron you must have had so many opportunities over your career to start a brand whatever may have crossed your path so why did you decide to do one Catherine power period
um no I you know there's obviously in the world of celebrity um a lot of people come to you they want you to sign on to whether it's a you know something that they're going to pay you for something they want you to invest in um there's a lot of different opportunities I myself have never been sort of a product person um my products have always been movies so I sold my films really well you know um I pounded the pavement I went out there I pushed my you know pushed my product um but I
didn't really uh ever take on sort of a product because I didn't want to put my name on something and um it just wasn't my it wasn't my B you know what I'm saying um but Katherine and I are good friends we were you know we spend a lot of time together we would always kind of find each other at uh friend Gatherings um where we would sit in the corner and have a glass of wine and talk about food and houses and you know be a little antisocial be a little antisocial and um you
know one day we just sort of had that moment where we were just like what is in the bottle like we ask this question about everything else that we consume um but we both realized we had never thought to ask about the wine because it kind of felt like one of those really romantic Notions that wine was just like fermented grapes you know how fun that is and like squishy and warm it felt and then we were like but is it because I feel like every time I have like a glass and a half you
know so like what's happening um so we turned the bottle around and realized that it was you know there was no label there was no ingredient list and we thought to ourselves hm that's very interesting we wouldn't consume something of anything else if we didn't know what was inside of it like literally the ingredients and we said is it just fermented grapes and that led us onto a path of learning about how what the wine making process was and how there could be over so0 ingredients added with no you know transparency and all the different
things that those ingredients were and could become and um that we would never consume otherwise you know we just wouldn't if we saw any of those on a label we would just take our hands off of the the the product and never consume it um so we decided that we were going to make a wine that we could drink and feel good about and put give to to other wine lovers um and give you know really be the brand that um was leading that transparency and that people could you know depend on to have the
highest quality so amazing you know Katherine why was it that the wine industry had not been part of these conversations around ingredient transparency organic products non-toxic products those conversations have gone pretty mainstream how had the wine industry aborted it and has anything changed since you launched the brand yeah it's a very old-fashioned industry um and you know it's not a product that's governed by the FDA it's governed by something called the ttb so they don't don't have the same kind of oversight as any food that we would eat or other even beverages that we would
consume that are non-alcoholic um so it used to be you know you would go into a wine store and if if a wine was organic it would be kind of pushed off to the side and it would it would be kind of like a dirty word right even though many you know producers and Growers across Europe are farming without pesticides making wine in this really beautiful way without a lot of additives um and it was really a personal Journey that we set out to you know find cleaner wine and when we couldn't find it in
Los Angeles which is like the mecca of Wellness we thought this is a problem so we would go to the restaurants we would go to the stores and we would say do you have any clean wine do you have any organic wine do you have any natural wine and people would roll their eyes at us they were so snobby and or they would say it's all organic it's just grapes you know but we knew from doing the research that as Cameron said you can add over 73 ingredients throughout the process many of which uh you
know these ingredients at high levels can be toxic um without any transparency so we really wanted to lead the charge not only did we want to be able to drink we love wine you know we love good wine we wanted to be able to continue to drink it um so we created it you know first for ourselves and then felt compelled to share our story with our consumers and I think we've really championed this whole new movement in in better for you wines now we have dedicated organic month at grocery stores and menus that note
you know if something's biod dnamic or organic and so the industry is really coming around but it's a very old-fashioned industry that needs a lot of pushing yeah laughing at you I can't imagine Cameron what does your ideal wine setup look like you're having it last where are you what's going on oh I mean in this room with these ladies i' I've arrived um you know I think that's one thing for us with avalene you know you think a lot of times about wine as sort of this you know celator beverage where you're like you're
sitting down you you serve it at an event or you sit serve it at a at a dinner party but Katherine and I really wanted avalene to be so your everyday drinking wine the one that you put on I put on the table you know um and you you know that's why we put the with our Three core wines we put the um the screw Tops on because we're like pull the cork out what are you GNA do got it g to put it back in is it going to save like how I don't want
to drink the whole bottle you know um so we put the screw cap on so that we could you know have a glass of wine with dinner and put it back in the fridge and tomorrow night I'll have another glass of wine with dinner I just want a glass I just want a glass of wine and um so that's kind of you know we we kind of say it's your it's your everyday wine it's the glass that you enjoy wherever you're at whatever you're doing doing your laundry doing you [Music] know watching the baby monitor
um I don't know you just insert it wherever it works for you yeah okay that's a beautiful Vision um you know Katherine as Cameron alluded to like you have launched several successful brands of your career but this is really the only one that could be considered a quote unquote celebrity brand so what made Cameron the right partner for you and what's your view on what makes for a successful celebrity brand and what does not work yeah even though I have um a celebrity brand or participate in in one um I don't necessarily believe in them
just broadly right um Cameron is a founder of this business I mean we literally you know the first dollars into the business were ours we picked the Pantone chips we knocked on doors in Europe trying to convince these old world wine families to work with these two girls from Hollywood like you know it's it it is not a celebrity brand it's a brand that needed to exist that we wanted to build so that it would stand on its own and now we're at the point where when people learn it's Cameron's brand they're pleasantly surprised but
they've actually heard of the brand first and so that's how I know we've done a good job and I think you know it's it's very hard as a venture or private Equity backed business um to have a celebrity attached I think alcohol is maybe one of the only categories where we're still seeing a lot of m&a um uh around celebrity Brands but there's often a lot of risk in that and so they just don't trade they don't get the investment and ultimately you know you have to take a business to an exit so um as
an investor it's actually not something I'm super excited about but for a brand like avalene that needed to exist no matter who the founders were you know we were just two passionate people you know that brought different perspectives to this new business we created interesting and of course it doesn't hurt but yeah well you know part of your strategy is Target what you've called this xennial consumer who's this microgeneration between Millennials and Gen X what is so powerful about this consumer and what do you get out of targeting her I love the the zenial customer
so all of my businesses um I have avalene I have a a a beauty brand called Meritt I have a um skincare brand called verst um they all target the zenial and um it's really somebody who has um you know who grew up without technology but now participates in it they kind of bridge the the gap between Millennial and and Gen X um they're very influential across all different Generations so they show up and they buy it for themselves but she also buys a bottle of avalene for her mom or she goes to Sephora and
she buys a blush for her you know 13-year-old daughter because it's clean and natural so we feel like by targeting this consumer we're actually reaching multiple gen Generations they're more brand loyal they're higher you know average order value basket size all of that I think it's a very exciting um sort of micro demo yeah it's a really interesting strategy um so Cameron you made a transition away from acting and took some time to focus on other parts of your life including avalene and you've spoken about wanting to simplify your life and you know have a
more manageable life that you could handle yourself and we have a lot of other women in the room who have similarly very high level high-powered careers that are very complex and have likely considered some of those same existential questions so for someone else considering whether to press pause or to Pivot to something else what advice would you give them about how to know whether it's the right choice and how to do it in a way that serves them well I can only speak for myself like for me it was just um I something I had
to do um it felt like the right thing for me to reclaim my own life and I just really didn't care about anything else I didn't like I don't nobody's opinion nobody's success no one's offer no one's anything could change my mind about my decision of taking care of myself and looking after the you know and building the life that I really wanted to have um and so I think it's it really comes to you know what are you passionate about you know whether it's for me it was to you know build my family for
other people it might just be you know what I I went to school for this and I've done it my whole life and I know how to do it really really well I'm at the top of my game but it doesn't feed my soul and I always like taking pictures or you know whatever or I always thought I could be a gardener or whatever it is like that's the thing you feel in your soul that speaks to you and you feel peace in it um you're going to figure it out you're going to find a
way to you go there and then um a friend of mine a long time ago said told me this gave me this imagery which I thought was really interesting it was like a a jellyfish has to suck into itself before it can Propel forward right so if you think of a jellyfish it's like all of its power even OCT any of of these it's like comes in and it comes into itself and it pushes forward and I always thought of that I was like I can't go forward anymore if I don't come into myself and
I don't pull in all of my energy and my power to be able to thrust forward so once you figure that out for yourself and take the time and however much time it takes you to do it it doesn't it's on your timeline it's yours um you just do that and you'll find your way to your next you know passion or you'll build the passion you're in so wow amazing um on the other side of that you do have your first project in a while coming out in early 2025 so how did you know it
was the right time for you to come back and how would you frame that for others who are considering whether to get back into something um it was just the right time for my family after the covid um I was like we were in the house for a long time which was amazing and the problem was was that we would probably stay there we would still be right now people would be like it's over and I'd be like no it's not it is not it's not over for me um so I had to push myself
my husband and I were like you know and my husband who's the best he's just the best he was just like you've been supporting us and you know building the family and you know supporting him in his businesses he's like it's time for us to like support you and let Mommy like you know Ascend and do her do her thing he's like let me see you do it girl I was all right here we go so are you excited also was that I'm really excited I mean also Jamie Fox I couldn't say no to Jamie
he said come with me and I was like okay let's do it it's our third film together so amazing really great yeah what have you taken with you from this time you know focusing on other things and including building avalene what have you learned um from your time as a Founder that you're now bringing into other parts of your life well I mean we were talking about this on the way down you know it's entrepreneurial Endeavors are creative Endeavors you know they're it's about creativity it's about finding something and making something out of nothing right
and um telling a story and um you know you know picking to pantones you know um but we uh you know it's an creative Endeavor so I think it's just a natural thing for me um personally to to create and um Katherine a phenomenal entrepreneur who knows how to build a business and also is very creative and um you know an artist in so many ways um so the two of us just we just had a lot of fun doing it it was just felt really natural I don't think we ever like as many people
to who told us no you can't do it that way we just were looking at them like whatever you can't do it that way we can watch us we'll figure it out so yeah that's a not you know Katherine something that really separates you as a Founder is that you've not just built one successful brand but you have this entire portfolio where you've built so many so what is the key to that repeat success how do you build not just one but several Brands you know they all come from a white space in the market
and they usually line up with a personal need that I have or a problem that I want to solve um you know and that I want to solve for other people so it's it's kind of starts with that and then you know I use data to validate that opportunity and even in the early days of avaline we went on our Instagram and said you know ask questions about wine do you know what organic wine is how often do you drink wine a week you know it's just like all these things to inform you know what
we wanted to create and you start to get signals you know from people from the universe that you're headed in the right direction and then um you know from there it's just about putting the right people together um you know not unlike you know doing a film right it's like there's a there's a brand there's a narrative and then you got to put the right team together to execute it yeah so Cameron has this you know scratched to founder itch for you should we be keeping an eye out for any other brands any other projects
from you um only if Katherine does it with me seriously that's it amazing well thank you both so much it was a pleasure to chat with you thank you thank you everyone the stage
